Bones
by bipocni
Summary: Kokakku Kaguya is a self insert, like so many others before him. But unlike the others, he's determined to take canon and bin it. SI/OC, dark, trigger warnings.
1. Prologue - Suicide

_And so with sadness in my heart, I think the best thing I could do, is end it all and leave forever - Komm, süßer Tod._

* * *

There wasn't really a reason for it, when you came down to it. There was no great tragedy, no spark to the powder keg. Things had been continuing more or less like they always did. And for some reason, that was enough.

As usual, I woke up feeling like roadkill. My sluggish body ached, and my tired mind struggled to grope for concepts, like every morning. Bleary eyed, I looked around my bedroom, and for the first time, it was like I was really _seeing_ it.

Next to my bed was the heap of dirty laundry I never found the energy to do. Littered across my floor was all the trash that never quite made it to the bin. Shit, even my walls were grimy, their once white facade tainted with swathes of grey (and who even knows how that happens)? My bed stank, unwashed sheets reeking of old sweat, with old bloodstains sprinkled all over because that shit never quite washes out. My desk was covered in bits of broken electronics, projects that never seemed to get off the ground, for all that I was willing to collect debris. Really, the only thing that seemed even vaguely organised was the neat stack of dirty dishes, that I could never be bothered to wash.

My nose crinkled into a sneer, as I thought to myself _what a shithole_. Because it was, really. Like everything else I'd ever touched, my room was a disgusting, broken down shell of what it could have been.

Moseying to the kitchen for that oh-so-necessary cup of coffee, half falling over and using the wall to prop myself up, it occurred to me: _what a waste of a perfectly good house. A family could live here. It could be useful, if only someone cared._

This wasn't exactly a new thought to me. I'd always felt that sense of wasted potential. Really, in a way, that summed up my whole life. As a kid, I was always told that I had _so much_ potential, and I'd wasted my life waiting for that potential to turn into actual. Turns out, that isn't how things work. And I was sick of waiting.

 _What if I just killed myself?_ What if, what if, what if. 'What if' is a perfectly reasonable question, which sparks curiosity in most people. But curiosity required a little more mental effort than I was capable of in my groggy state, so I fell back into old patterns and just let my mind wander into the darkest corners it could find.

But today, it seemed more than a stray thought, emerging unbidden from my subconscious. Today it felt like an exam that you hadn't taken the time to study for. Like that age old nightmare, finding yourself sitting the finals for a class after you somehow missed every single lecture. A kind of panicky anxiety clawed its way up my throat, but I squashed it down with the well practiced ease that any paranoid is familiar with.

While the kettle boiled, I took the time to roll a cigarette. Half asleep, the best effort I could put forth was a crumbly, flaccid looking thing. It looked sad to me, like it was disappointed in itself.

The problem with most suicides, when you really think about it, is that it doesn't _stop_ the pain. It just transfers it to the people you leave behind. And I knew that I could never do that. As bitter and resentful as I was at times, I did love the people in my life, and I wouldn't ever want to do something that would hurt them.

The sharp whistle of the kettle on the stovetop shook me out of my reverie. Today felt like a three scoops, no sugar, black coffee affair. Tasted god awful, but for an addict like me it was the only thing with enough kick to get me going.

I set fire to my little disappointment off the stovetop. Legally speaking, I wasn't allowed to smoke in the rental house, but my landlord was a dope fiend who never once dropped by to check on me, so I could give a fuck.

Besides, today I was in one of those nihilistic moods. That no consequences mentality that said that it really didn't matter what I was _allowed_ to do. I was going to do me, and fuck what anyone else thought.

I kind of just slumped to the floor. Going outside seemed like too much effort right now. Still, this was a sharehouse and I didn't want to make someone else clean up my mess, so I resorted to using my coffee mug as an ashtray. Worst it could do was improve the flavour.

It was this instinctual concern for others that really gave me the plan. I didn't want anyone to _know_ if I killed myself. I didn't want my housemates to have to deal with a body, to have to live in a house where someone they knew topped themself. I didn't know if someone would even know how to call my parents, but I didn't want them woken up in the middle of the night to _that_ phone call. No kid wants to disappoint their parents. I didn't want my friends torturing themselves, wondering why they never saw it, whether they could have done anything to prevent it.

 _Really_ , I thought to myself as acrid smoke burned my eyes and boiling coffee burned my throat, _it would be better for everyone if I just disappeared._

That, I could do. If I was out of the house, out of the state, I could just drop off the map. I'm sure no-one would look to closely at just another drifter taking the cowards way out. As long as their was nothing in my pockets that could identify me, anyone investigating would probably just shrug it off. Just another John Doe.

And really, it wasn't like there was anything stopping me. I hadn't had a girlfriend since my abusive ex, I'd dropped out of university without a word to anyone (and none of my 'friends' had ever checked up on me, the bastards). My housemates knew I was an eremitic recluse, so they probably wouldn't get to wondering before the rent was late.

And wasn't that a bit of a laugh. After twenty five years of trying my best to find _someone, anyone please god_ I had no real connection to the people around me. Shit, I'd been _married_ once and even then we'd never _really_ known each-other.

 _So,_ I thought, with just a hint of bitterness, _why the fuck not._

* * *

Hitchhiking was a trip. It was the middle of fucking summer, and it felt like a million odd degrees outside. The whole way across the country, there wasn't a cloud in the fucking sky. It took two weeks before I felt like I'd gone far enough, and in that time my skin had turned a leathery brown. Although only part of that could be attributed to sunburn. The rest of it was just accumulated grime.

I was _devoted_ to this cover as a drifter. I'd been sleeping rough, I hadn't had a shower in... well, three weeks to be honest. Not that much point in trying to look presentable when you never leave the house anyway. I'm sure I stank to high heaven, if the looks the drivers gave me were anything to go by.

God bless those drivers. There aren't many that will stop at the side of the highway to pick up a filthy hitchhiker. Especially when I got near the end of my journey, and I started to look _really_ bad.

Really, you'd think that two weeks of this bullshit would be enough to convince anyone to turn back. Problem was, I'd left my meds back at the house. The longer I was out here, the more unhinged I got. I didn't really talk, those first few days, because serotonin syndrome is a _bitch_ , and after that I learned not to. People got pretty creeped out by me when I opened my mouth.

Not that I could blame them. My mouth was a thing of nightmares. Chipped teeth stained yellow from years of too much coffee, wrapped in an unkempt beard that grew in patches. That's ignoring the fact I hadn't brushed my teeth in two weeks, and my lips had little black stains on them from unfiltered nicotine.

So I kept my mouth shut for the most part, although whenever I found solitude I had a habit of muttering to myself, singing off key, and generally keeping the silence at bay.

As much as I wanted someone to just drop me off on the Nullabor so I could wander out into the desert and get this thing done, I figured asking someone to abandon me in the middle of the desert would attract too much attention. So I had to tough it out until I found a place with a nice abandoned building.

Abandoned buildings weren't the best place. Usually, there were some locals squatting in them, but those weren't exactly the kind of people who report a body. As long as I found the right one, it shouldn't put a damper on my plans.

In the end, I found an abandoned hospital. That struck a chord in me. A hospital was the last place I wanted to end up as a result of my little plan, but here I was planning to go through with it in one. Then again, I always was a sarcastic little shit. I owed it to myself to go out as ironically as possible.

It was a nice building too. Or at least, it had been once. Thing must have been a hundred years old, with those big stone blocks people used to use before bricks were invented. There were sweeping windows decorating the outside of it, although quite a few of them were empty frames ringed with jagged glass. Oh, and the graffiti that seemed to cover ever inch of it.

Okay, so it was a ramshackle piece of shit. But that was fine.

Inside, it was even worse. The ground was _covered_ in filth, from cans of spray paint, to used needles, cigarette butts, empty bottle of booze... the list goes on. One room I went through even had a burned out mattress, like someone wanted to sit around the worlds most carcinogenic fire.

I stumbled up the stairs, what few of them remained, to eventually come across a relatively intact bathtub. At the very least, it looked like it would hold as much blood as I was going to put in it. I even double checked it was still connected up to the plumbing, although I had no idea where that went. I muttered a little apology, in case I was going to ruin someones day by bleeding all over them from a random frikken hole in the wall, but really, it was their fault for dicking around in an abandoned building in the first place.

Even now, when I was face to face with the end of all my struggles, I couldn't find it in myself to turn back. I was _tired_. I'd always felt a sort of general fatigue that I couldn't shake, but after two weeks of barely eating and sleeping outside, I was exhausted like I'd never been before. It took some considerable effort on my part to drag my body into the tub.

I'd stripped off all my clothes before I got in (in case some vagrant was desperate enough to wear a dead guys filthy unwashed clothes) and the rusty lip of the tub scraped against my pot belly, drawing blood. I took a second to appreciate that I wouldn't have to get a tetanus shot for that.

* * *

So I sat there, for a time, staring at the razors edge. It was all part of the ritual. I had a myriad of scars on my thighs, from all the times in the past where it all got too much and I just had to feel _something_. It wasn't like I was scared of the pain. Hell, I was eager for it. But there's always a little psyching up you have to do before you make the first cut. Self harm goes against nearly every instinct your body has. No matter how good you know it's going to feel, there's just a little part of you that's screaming not to do it.

I wondered if I should make the effort to have some kind of profound last thought. I hadn't left a note, but this was personal. There was a lot I was leaving unfinished, and I didn't want to die with the regret that I'd spent my last moments ruminating something stupid. Can you imagine a worse fate than dying while struggling to remember the name of that actor, which you could _swear_ was just on the tip of your tongue?

But hey, dead is dead. I wasn't expecting any sort of afterlife. I'd just kind of... stop. So it was with almost a shrug as I made a few practice cuts on my leg. Gotta make sure I'm going deep enough when I head for the main vein.

The wrists were a new experience for me. I'd never done the arms before, determined as I was to keep my shame to myself, so I was unprepared, but not exactly surprised, by the sensation. The blood that immediately welled out was a little shocking. It was _too bright_ , and there was too much of it, and it finally hit me then that I was really going to do this.

You want to know what I felt in those last moments? Relief. I made sure to cut the other arm as well, and then just kind of sank back in bliss. Already, I was starting to feel cold. Which is wonderful, when you're living in an Australian summer. And the burning in my thighs, and my wrists, felt like a big warm hug against the chill seeping into my bones.

So I reveled in the sensation of my life blood dripping away. Sure, it felt kind of sticky and gross against my skin, but I was already starting to fall asleep. A nice, dreamless sleep, and I prayed that I would never be woken up again.

* * *

Authors notes: I've tried to make this come across as a story, and not just a rather abstract suicide note. Before anyone asks, no, I'm not planning on killing myself. Thanks for your concern.

Please review. I have absolutely no idea how to write.


	2. Interlude - Kasumi

_Got some bad news this morning - Gnarls Barkley_

* * *

Kasumi sighed as she looked down at the docks. The view from the top of the hill encompassed half the town, from the early morning light reflecting off the waterfront to the dusty trail leading further inland. Yet even from this distance, she could see the bandages on some of the men unloading the latest imports from Udon no Kuni. Some were walking with an obvious limp, or favouring one side, and she _knew_ they weren't cleared to work yet. _Then again_ , she thought, _there's not much to be done_.

Life was hard on Toshima Island, the westernmost archipelago of Mizu no Kuni. The war had ravaged the land to the bone. There'd been a small influx of settlers early on in the war, ignorant people who thought being on one of the smaller islands would protect them from the worst of it. Unfortunately, the island Kasumi lived on was the closest to Hi no Kuni, as well as being a major supply line into the country.

Unlike the other islands making up Water Country, Toshima Island was close enough to the mainland that a determined ninja could run across the strait. This made Kasumi's home a common entry point to the Land of Water, for those trying to strike at the heart of the country. It was also fairly common target for ninja saboteurs, whenever Konoha or Suna felt like Kiri had things too easy. But too easy was never a concept that applied to the people of Mizu no Kuni, and the locals just made do as best they could whenever a shipment didn't make it through.

All this action in the area meant Kasumi was inured to the sight of ninja, both friend and foe. It didn't do to feel too threatened by them, in the end. The more intelligent ninja knew they couldn't wipe out _all_ the civilians. A scorched earth policy would eventually kill every hidden village, once things inevitably got out of control. In general, they tried to keep the civilians from getting involved. As soon as one Hidden Village started striking out at the non-combatants, they all would, and there would be nothing left in the end.

Still, civilian casualties did happen, and most were cautious if not outright fearful when confronted with a ninja.

Kasumi was better equipped to deal with them than most. Some called her brave, and some called her foolish, but mostly she just couldn't find it in herself to see them as anything more than human. Even ninja as paranoid and skittish as those from The Village of the Bloody Mist tended to relax just a little on home soil. And working the bar at the only _respectable_ hotel on the island, she saw more than a few in her day to day work. For all they could throw around supernatural forces, they still acted like idiots when they got drunk, and she saw them drunk often. The trick was just to keep your distance and be respectful, and they wouldn't lash out at you.

This was probably the reason she had been recruited in the way she had been. It was almost impossible not to overhear bits and pieces, once they had some drinks in them. So when a Konoha ninja calling himself 'The Great Toad Sage' had asked her to keep tabs on who came and went from the village, she hadn't been surprised. And she hadn't hesitated either, for there was little love lost between the downtrodden citizens of Mizu no Kuni and their unstoppable oppressors. Not since the appointment of the fourth Mizukage, ending the last civil war.

Normally, an end to the constant warfare that plagued her homeland would have been a cause for celebration, but then the rumours had started. Of the piles of corpses that were all that remained of the bloodline clans. Of the children, some as young as nine, who were forced to fight to the death at the academy. Of a creepy, child sized man who viewed his ninja with open suspicion and acted with such _hostility_ , in every order he gave. Of the vicious ANBU under his command, and the atrocities they committed.

Many of the locals had family who were ninja, or who had married into one of the clans. For all the Kiri ANBU acted as secret police, disappearing ninja without trial for the merest hint of sedition, nothing stopped the rumours once they started. They silenced as many as they could, but it's impossible not to notice when your sister never comes home to visit, when your daughter never comes back from school.

The Yondaime Mizukage was abhorrent. It's one thing to expect a child soldier to kill in the heat of battle, in a time of war. It's something completely different to expect them to murder their best friend in cold blood, under the watchful eye of the people they trusted to keep them safe. And it was impossible to label an entire clan of people as threats, when half of the clans had been _civilian_.

No-one Kasumi knew could understand his motivations. Even before the Third Shinobi War had started, the Mizukage had been leading his soldiers to their deaths. Had been butchering his own people. Open rebellion was an impossibility, when he seemed to have even the Daimyō's backing. So everyone just held their breath, and wondered what the madman would order next.

The ranks had been purged, twice over. This, Kasumi knew, and for all she'd told Jiraiya, he'd never acted surprised. She thought the man must have a vast intelligence network. Sure, much of what she told him was common knowledge to the people not just of Toshima Island, but Mizu no Kuni at large. But Jiraiya was a foreigner. For him to have already heard the news, he must have another spy somewhere in the country. Maybe even one on every island.

Which was part of the reason she was so angry with him. She intended to have _words_ with Jiraiya, if he even cared about her anymore. He'd made vague promises to keep her safe, back when they'd first met. Even if she'd outlived her usefulness once the war ended, surely her years of service would have at least warranted her a warning. He must have known what would happen, and he'd said _nothing_.

But then, even at the time she hadn't put much faith in the words. Turning traitor was terrifying, and the mumbled reassurances from a man who spent his time in a separate country were worth nothing. If she'd been caught, the consequences would have been terrible, and she knew she would have been all alone to face them.

But she hadn't been caught. As far as Kasumi knew, she'd never even been suspected. Somehow, she'd made it through the war, reporting on her own side in one of the most active hotspots on the front lines, and she had to hope that was worth _something_.

Kasumi was a strong girl, but now she felt hollow and stretched thin. She sighed again, turning away from the docks and heading back down the hill. Every day she'd come to watch the boats arrive, and every day she left disappointed. She knew a messenger hawk would have gone through to him before now. He'd responded much faster in the past. _Just be patient_ she told herself, but she had a sinking feeling in her heart that she'd been abandoned.

* * *

It was long past sundown when Jiraiya finally left the confines of the ship. Even if the war was officially over, he had enough history with Kiri nin that he didn't want to push his luck walking around in broad daylight. Fearsome though his reputation may be, there were always hungry young ninja looking to take him down. And Kiri nin were hungrier than most.

Like any respectable ninja, he avoided a fight whenever he could. And also, there had been some rather cute girls on that ship, who were quite willing to keep an old man company.

His thoughts were still decidedly lecherous as he stepped onto the dock and caught his first sight of the village. It had more battle damage than the last time he'd seen it. _A lot more_ , now that he took the time to catalogue it, _somebody brought the fight right into the middle of town_.

Curious now, he made his way through the shadows to the hotel. This was probably related to whatever Kasumi had called him here for. Even if it wasn't, if it was important, he was sure she'd bring it up anyway.

The Toad Sage swiped a bottle of shōchū on his way through the empty bar. It was past closing time, as it had been for every meeting they'd had, but for the first time she wasn't already waiting for him nursing a drink of her own. Jiraiya settled in, rocking back in his chair and shaking his white mane loose his shoulders as he popped the bottle open. He wasn't a fan of waiting at the best of times, let alone responding to the summons of some civilian woman. No, he was planning to be good and sloshed by the time she gets here.

Kasumi didn't show for more than an hour, by which time he was halfway through the bottle, thoroughly irritated. He'd been idly tossing a kunai through the air, and he threw her a glare as she sat primly in the chair opposite him. He caught the kunai without breaking eye contact as he spoke up.

"Maa, Kasumi-chan, you've kept me waiting. I was getting bored." Although his tone was jovial, he kept the kunai out as he talked. He really was vexed, and Kasumi was braver than most civilians. She could handle a little intimidation if it helped him blow off steam.

"Jiraiya-sama," she nodded to him. After that, she simply stayed perched in her seat. He waited a moment, to see if she'd give anything else away, but she didn't even reach for the open bottle on the table between them.

Now, Jiraiya wouldn't have pegged her for an alcoholic, but she'd always had a drink before during their little discussions. He wasn't sure that her inaction signified anything, but it definitely counted as uncharacteristic behaviour for her.

Raising an eyebrow, he asked, "So what's so important that you felt the need to drag me all the way out here Kasumi-chan? Not that I don't love our little talks, but the war is over. You can relax, a little, if you want." His words were at odds with the kunai in his hand, so he put it away, as if to show her _look, It's safe now._

Kasumi sort of boggled, her eyes wide open and her jaw dropping slightly. Then, she threw her head back and gave a bitter laugh. "You really have no idea what's happened here, do you?"

"Why don't you fill me in?" Jiraiya was all business now. This sounded like a pretty big deal.

Kasumi looked a tad reticent now, as she spoke. "The Kaguya clan came through the village," she began, her voice monotone. "They, they killed," her voice broke, "a lot of people." The last came out almost as a whisper, as her eyes stared off into the distance. "I'm pregnant."

 _Shit_.

Jiraiya was not a fan of not knowing things. It was his god damn business to know things. Now, admittedly, the latest unfortunate target of the endless rampage of the Kaguya clan hardly registered as important news to Konoha as a whole, but apparently Kasumi had decided to make it his problem.

He took a swig of shōchū, letting the alcohol swish around in his mouth while he thought about this. He was past drunk enough for it to stop burning, so he took the time to really appreciate it's nutty flavour. If she really was carrying a Kaguya child, it could be very valuable to Konoha. Their bloodline was legendary, and if the child happened to develop it they would make a fine ninja indeed.

"I hate to ask this," he began, chagrined, "but are you sure its..." He needed to be sure before he made a decision, but there was no reason not to be a gentleman about it.

" _Yes_ ," she growled. Well. That was to be expected. If the clan had really rampaged through the village, it was pretty unlikely she'd found herself pregnant under friendly circumstances.

The rest of this conversation was already feeling scripted, and Jiraiya was half inclined just to skip it all together. "You want Konoha to take you in."

"I can't stay here. I _can't_. If my baby shows any signs of harboring that dreadful bloodline, they'll kill me."

And she was right. The Mist ANBU took to their jobs with an almost religious fervor. The price for even consorting with a bloodline carrier was death. The only reason the Kaguya clan was even still alive was because they happened to make damn strong warriors, and they never settled in one place long. Neither of which applied to the waifish civilian woman sitting in front of him. And a pregnant woman wouldn't last long on the open road.

Jiraiya didn't want to do this. He really didn't. He felt like a mercenary for thinking of the child as a future weapon before thinking of the needs of his spy. But without that as a bargaining chip between them, he would never have even considered helping her. For all he called himself The Gallant Jiraiya, Konoha came first, and picking up strays wasn't good for the village. Especially ones that needed medical care.

He still had enough misguided nobility to feel like scum for wanting to help this woman. Even if she would be better off for it, his motivations were hardly pure. But, he'd done worse in the name of his village before. Far worse. Really, helping out a damsel in distress and securing a potential asset for the village in one go was pretty good for a days work.

"How soon can you leave?" The gratitude on her face was unbearable. The aftertaste of the shōchū tasted like ash in his mouth, and he felt like it was entirely undeserved.

* * *

 _I've settled in quite well_ , Kasumi thought to herself, staring out the window of her new apartment. The sun was setting behind Hokage Rock, and the amber and gold colours it cast across the sky settled a warmth somewhere deep inside her, forcing out a little of the cold the icy fog of Mizu no Kuni had left in her long ago.

Sure, seeing ninja constantly flitting about the place had taken some getting used to, and maybe she had the odd war flashback, but then, most people around here did. The fighting may never have made it to Konoha proper, but there had been the occasional assassination attempt, prisoner escape, or just ninja coming home from a mission injured or bloody. It seemed like everyone knew someone who had been through the worst, so Kasumi was treated with a certain respect.

Suspicion, too, because she was foreign, but to the civilians, at least, that hardly seemed to matter.

Her pregnancy passed in a blur. Between finding a new place to live, trying to fit into a new social circle, and constant checkups to make sure the baby was healthy, she barely had time to think. She never saw Jiraiya again after he dropped her off, but then, she hadn't expected to either.

Still, she'd have to say, even if she wasn't quite happy she was... content. She'd never wanted this baby in the first place, but it was shaping up to be the best thing that ever happened to her. Even if she couldn't stomach the idea of a man ever touching her again. Even if she woke up at night sometimes, a scream trapped in her throat, vision still focused on that white hair dripping blood onto her face as her body rocked and all she could feel was nothing she felt nothing -

Okay, so maybe her life would have been better if those _bastard_ Kaguya had never come through her village in the first place. Still, Konoha was her village now, and she was reasonably sure nothing like that would ever happen here.

 _Yes_ , she thought, turning her gaze onto the twinkling lights that peppered the landscape as the last of the sun disappeared behind the mountains, _this is my home now. Everything is going to be okay_.

And then, with a twisted sort of dramatic irony, a giant nine tailed fox appeared on the horizon and started laying waste to the beautiful sight beneath her.

Kasumi was frozen. The air felt too thick to breath. She didn't dare make a move, in case she drew its attention. As far away as it was, she knew that it could see her, and it wanted to eat her. She knew, like she'd never known before, that she was going to die.

This was so much worse than the Kaguya attack. The air had felt heavy and oppressive then too, but not like this. Nothing could ever feel like this.

She was only dimly aware of a trickling sensation down her legs, and didn't at all notice the puddle forming beneath her. There just seemed to be more important things going on, like the end of the world.

Suddenly, there was a shinobi in the window. It was his shock of brilliant white hair that finally jolted her into action, and she screamed and threw herself backwards.

"NO!" she screamed, scrabbling backwards to try to get as far away as possible. "You're not touching me again! You're never touching me again!"

The young shinobi in front of her raised his hands, in the universal sign for surrender. He looked more confused than threatening. "Ne, Ojou-san, I'm not going to hurt you. I just came to say you need to get to a shelter."

It took Kasumi a moment to realise the young man in front of her wasn't another Kaguya coming to get her after all. He was a Konoha nin, giving her clear instructions in a time of danger. And on closer inspection, his hair was more silver than white.

Kasumi tried to feel embarrassed, but her heart was still hammering in her chest. Right. Get to a shelter. She'd drilled for this. Everyone in Konoha had. She could do this.

The young ninja looked at her again, frowning. He seemed to recognise a clarity in her eyes that hadn't been there before, and merely nodded seriously before making his way out of her door. _Probably to warn the others_ , she thought.

Getting up off a hardwood floor isn't exactly the easiest thing to do for a woman who's eight months pregnant, and it's even worse when the floor seems to be slippery for some reason. Kasumi slipped, and landed right on her baby bump before she could catch herself.

She cringed hard, worried for the sake of her unborn child, but that concern seemed to restore the last of the functioning to her limbs. That heavy aura still permeated the air, but now she was reminded that she wasn't just looking out for herself in this situation. She had a child to protect as well.

Making her way out the front door, she realised she'd never seen the hallway this busy before. She was quickly caught up in the stream of people heading for the basement, with only a comforting smile to spare to her kindly old neighbour from across the hall. She couldn't remember his name, but she knew he was a widower, and he walked with a cane.

Still, right now he was doing his best to prop her up and get her walking at a reasonable pace. They both leant into each other heavily, and people bumped up against them as they were overtaken in the rush to get to safety.

They were the last two to get to the shelter (really just a big concrete room with a ridiculous looking metal door) and quickly collapsed against the wall as the door was slammed shut behind them. There had to be a hundred people in there, and it was feeling quite cramped.

This far away from the demon rampaging above them, she could finally breath a little easier. But before she could catch her breath, there was a sharp pain in her abdomen.

She was clutching back a scream, because it really was quite painful, but it wouldn't do to panic anybody. Still, her friend seemed to catch her expression, because he shuffled a little closer to talk.

"I need a medic." she managed to whimper out.

Bless his heart, he didn't even question it. The old man merely struggle to his feet, gnarled hands gripping his cane as it shook unsteadily under his weight, before bellowing, "We need a medic over here!"

Faster than Kasumi could see, there was a man with the most _garish_ shade of hair she'd ever come across leaning over her, murmuring to himself as he ran a glowing palm across her midsection. His eyebrows shot up, and he turned to face her properly, and Kasumi braced herself for admonishments to take better care not to fall on her pregnant belly. But the words out of his mouth were not what she was expecting.

"The baby is coming now." Kasumi thought she had to be in shock. She misheard him, surely? Now? _NOW?_

"But it's a month early..." Even to her, it sounded like a weak excuse. It was literally hell on Earth upstairs. The rules of the game were changing. What was a premature birth compared to mountainous monsters tearing apart the foundations of your life?

"I know, Ojou-san. But he's coming now and he's coming fast." _He?_ She hadn't wanted to know the sex of the baby until it was born. But with that little revelation, it seemed like it was really happening. She was going to give birth, to some bastard ninja's rape baby, in a dirty shelter, while the world fell apart over her head.

She started to laugh a hysterical laugh, but it was quickly cut off by another contraction. Her baby, _my son_ , wanted out and it wanted out quick.

It seemed like a lifetime of pushing and screaming, as the medic nin ran soothing hands over the worst of it and her kindly neighbour fretted over her _like he must have done with his own wife once_. But in the end, her undersized, alien looking, slimy and pink and lovable baby son was born.

The medic nin was just giving him a quick check-over before he passed him to his mum, when all hell broke loose.

Bones seemed to sprout from all over the baby's torso, spearing the medics hands through and ruining them completely. The medic tried to rip his hands away, shredding them even worse in the process.

Horrified, Kasumi tried to wrap her head around the _thing_ she had given birth to. This was worse than the monster she'd only caught a glimpse of through her window. This was her own son, thrashing blindly on the ground beneath her as his body rapidly grew a shell, bones twisting and growing and covered in blood.

Spikes were raising out of his spine, as his skull burst through the skin around it, flattening around his neck as a shield even as _horns_ sprouted from the front of it.

Then, the little demon seemed to snap to attention, his eyes locking on her horrified expression. It jumped, faster than she could react, and - _oh my god was that a beak?_

Her body was in shock before its jaws had even snapped shut around her throat, ripping through her flesh like it wasn't there. Arterial blood sprayed in an arc away from her, as the people around her finally started screaming, and the demon fell limp from her neck, bleached bone painted red from his own mothers lifeblood.

Kasumi's eyes rolled back in her skull, and then she knew no more.

* * *

Authors notes: Well. That happened. I can't promise that every chapter won't end in a character death, but eh... double negative. It's a grey area?

I've decided to use the names of the Izu islands in japan for the islands that may get referenced in Water, because of their nickname 'the Izu 7' - I think it's cute coincidence for a country that's known for its 7 swordsmen. I'm also not really sure if Ojou-san is being used appropriately here, but so if there's anyone out there who's good with honourifics hit me up.

As always, please review. I'm counting on you guys to tell me when I'm doing something wrong, so I can do something about it.


	3. Childhood arc - 1

Previously, in bones: Our OC, fed up with life and the way things were going, decided to kill himself. Meanwhile Kasumi, a refugee from water country, turned to Konoha to shelter her and her unborn son. It might have been a good plan, if not for the nine tailed demon fox.

* * *

 _Explain myself to me on the other side, I'm gonna want some answers when I die - Brand New_

* * *

 _ **TERROR**_ **.**

That was the overwhelming, all consuming feeling I woke up to. It was horrifically jarring. Where was I? What was going on? The last thing I could remember, I'd been bleeding out in an abandoned hospital, and now...

Quite honestly, I had no idea. All I could see was fuzzy blurred outlines, and all I could hear was... Japanese? My limbs felt unresponsive, but that could just be because I was in the middle of some kind of panic induced seizure.

I was paralysed by a sensation I had never felt before. This was more than fear. I'd been hospitalised for street fights and cancer both, I'd talked girlfriends down from suicide, I'd been in car crashes and had exams I didn't study for and missed paychecks on the day rent was due. I'd been through some shit. None of it felt like this.

This wasn't just terrifying. This was a stranglehold around my throat. This was having thumbs pressed against my eyeballs till I thought I was going to go blind. This was ants crawling all over my skin, burrowing into my flesh. It was all this and more. I couldn't quite process it, because it was forcing itself against some sense I didn't even know I had and overpowering it so entirely that all it could do was short out again.

Like if the first time you opened your eyes, it was to a flashbang going off. Like hearing for the first time, and being deafened again by the intensity of it. It was _too much_ and it wouldn't stop.

Then, some deep seated instinct in me responded with anger. How _dare_ I let this feeling control me? What had the _audacity_ to make me feel so helpless?

 _ **RAGE.**_

I tried to scream, to let loose this new sensation inside, but nothing came out of my mouth. Instead, I felt agony in my bones as they strained until something gave way, something broke, and then there was the worst pain I had ever felt. There was a ripping, tearing sensation and something unnatural and wrong was happening and I couldn't find it in myself to stop it.

If the fear was like an undertow, dragging me into the depths, the anger was what pulled me back out again. I clung to it like a lifeline, like it was the only thing that still made sense right now.

All across my chest was a burning like fire. It felt like I was falling, from the grace of god and into the darkness in my soul. Then I hit the ground, and I realised I actually had been falling.

The world orientated itself around me, but it didn't help much. I was splayed out on a concrete floor, and all around me were rushing blurs of colour and screaming. I could barely tell up from down, and the pressure inside me wouldn't stop. My head felt like it was going to burst, my spine felt stretched and my muscles were seizing up the rage was getting worse and worse something inside of me howled _riptearkill_ I had to unleash it on _something anything killkillkill_. Through the red haze, I caught sight of a towering figure, with blood spattered across their legs, and instinctively I lunged.

I wasn't even surprised that I made it all the way to their throat in a single bound. I felt powerful, it felt _right_ that I was that strong. And sinking my teeth in and tearing out their throat felt even better. Nothing could be more natural than effortlessly slaughtering any that would dare threaten me.

As we both tumbled to the ground, I was overwhelmed, again, but this time with exhaustion. I didn't even feel the impact. I tried to get back up, there were more people, I was still in danger, but my hands and legs gave out underneath me. Weary, I collapsed into unconsciousness as fatigue took me.

* * *

I woke up to a sense of emotional whiplash. After everything that had just happened, I felt drained. It was different to the nihilism I'd felt while hitchhiking. Then, I'd just felt empty. This was damn near diametrically opposed to that. I'd felt too much, in too short at time, and the only way to recover was to shut down and reboot.

I was also physically tired, bone tired, and that was probably for the best. That awful terror was still permeating the air, and that same rush of anger was trying to fight it. Caught between the desire to play possum and the desire to rise up and fight, it made my choice a lot clearer when I was too tired to move.

Given that nothing urgently needed my attention, I allowed myself the chance to think. What the hell was going on?

I had vague memories of blood and giants, except that couldn't be right. But looking around me, I appeared to be in some kind of hospital room, except the proportions were all wrong. Either blood loss, or withdrawal, or both had screwed with my depth perception.

So. My grand plan had failed. I'd intended to just go quietly into that good night, but obviously someone had interrupted. I wanted to hold out hope that no-one had managed to trace back who I was, had managed to tell people what I'd done, but that was foolish. If the fever dream I'd had was any indication, I hadn't been particularly lucid lately. There was all likelihood that I'd been talking already.

Even if I hadn't, well, I was stranded a thousand miles from home. Right now, for the first time in a long time, I didn't want to die. If I was going to have any chance of getting back, I'd have to do a lot of talking to a lot of people.

How embarrassing.

Of course, the assumption was I'd actually get to talk to someone, which proved to be incorrect. I lay in that bed for a fucking week before I saw another human being. A week of lying completely still, limbs too heavy and the forces of terror and rage fighting a war in my head. Apparently I was being fed through a tube in my nose, and there was a catheter at the other end to take care of any waste, but what kind of a way is that to treat a human being? I was a fully grown man, suffering in the aftermath of a traumatic incident. Shouldn't there at least be a psychiatrist coming by to see me? When the hell was I going to be allowed back onto solid foods?

Yet, once I did see a person, I longed for the blissful ignorance I'd had before.

It was maybe an hour after whatever it was that was scaring me so badly had finally decided to call it quits and fade away. For the first time, someone entered my hospital room. And I was starting to think either my hallucinations about giants weren't hallucinations after all, or I had finally snapped and gone off the deep end into full blown psychosis.

Because that was definitely a giant that walked into my room. And that giant definitely did not have a face.

Of course, once the giant got closer to me I realised actually wait, that's a _mask_. Not a surgical mask, a great big blank porcelain mask. My eyes were still too gunked up to see properly, but ceramic is fairly distinctive and it looked very out of place. That is not the sort of thing people wear in a hospital.

There was a masked giant, looming over me quite imposingly, and I felt threatened. A week of fear and anger had left me emotionally fatigued, but I'd _finally_ managed to calm my nerves and this was threatening to blow my cool pretty quick. It was enough to spur me into action, trying to get my tired body to move, to get away.

Adrenaline, it turned out, wasn't enough. My limbs still felt like lead, and they were completely unresponsive to my sudden panic. I tried to say something, maybe to reason with this fearsome being, but the only noises that came out of my mouth sounded like gibberish. The giant above me didn't even respond, except to continue to fiddle with something out of my sight.

Then it left again. Not a word was spoken. It was, quite honestly, terrifying in a whole new way. And the absurdity of it left me wondering if I wasn't hallucinating after all.

And then, as the day wore on, something changed my mind. That giant was real, and it had put some kind of psychedelic in my IV drip. I'd experimented, in the past, with various narcotics. I recognised what it felt like to be tripping. And this weird new feeling, tickling a sixth sense I _knew_ I wasn't supposed to have, well that was pretty much the definition of a trip.

It was coming from the opposite direction that slowly waning terror had been coming from, but neither of these directions mapped to the coordinate system I knew. It was inside, but not inside. Central, but distinctly separate from the three dimensional space I lived in.

Since this seemed so important to me right now, I supposed I could call the centre of this whole debate cruxwise and the 'outside' I felt earlier would be fringewise.

The mind does tend to wander when you've been stuck in bed for a week. And even this ineffable sensation wasn't enough to distract me from my need to quantify everything.

But it was damn hard to quantify this feeling. Probably the closest I could get to a comparison was the sensation in your urethra when you pee, but that has all kinds of connotations that don't fit at all. Still, it could be best described as a sensation of something warm and flowing, not quite cruxwise and not quite fringewise, but in a sort of slow loop. Where it went it seemed to push back against a deflated feeling I hadn't previously been aware of.

Never one to shy away from seeing what a trip had to offer, I flexed some kind of mental muscle and poked at this thing. And _it poked back_. What had previously been a relatively lackadaisical sensation became agitated, and that gentle flow turned turbulent. It passed in a few moments, but there was a definite lasting sense of wariness that had been absent previously.

Paranoia wasn't anything new to me, and if this thing wanted me to leave it alone it would have been only polite to do so. But, I was bored out of my mind after a week of lying in bed staring up at a blank ceiling, so I was feeling rather impudent.

Redoubling my efforts, I poked it again, but harder.

This time, it definitely reacted. This wasn't a gentle poke back. This was thorns, trying to burst through from the crux to my actual insides. God damn that thing was prickly as hell. As before, it calmed down after a moment, although it held on to a lingering grumpiness.

Maybe it was best just to let sleeping dogs lie. One weird physical sensation wasn't much of a trip, but I was pretty sure it was all I was going to get at this point. With a mental sigh, I closed my eyes and drifted off to yet another nap.

* * *

I was in that hospital bed for a good five weeks, although they did eventually remove the feeding tubes and the catheter. Instead, I got milk bottles and diapers. Spoiler alert: apparently I'm a baby now.

The news didn't distress me as much as it probably would most people, and it wasn't just because I was being squeezed gently against a pair of tits bigger than I was when the thought occurred to me. Although I have to say, being cuddled by giants is actually pretty damn comforting on an instinctual level.

My previous life was an unending serious of fuckups, like a tragicomedy that never made it to the punchline. Reincarnation was actually something I'd always idly dreamed about, because a guy like me would give anything for the chance to start over again. A fresh start! There was so much I could _do_ with that.

Even the indignity of diapers was taken in good humour. After all I could just scream my head off whenever I needed them changed, or I was hungry, or I was cold, or any other reason. That part was probably worse, in a way, because I'd always been pretty shy.

And I wasn't even particularly bored, to tell the truth. My little 'friend' had turned out to be quite playful, once I'd let it have it's nap. It tended to creep fringewise almost with a mind of it's own, and we made quite a game out of me poking it back down. It wasn't quite whack-a-mole and it wasn't quite chess, and it was the most fun I'd had in ages.

Forceful poking wasn't all I could do. With some gentle cajoling I could get it to travel all around my body, and with a little encouragement it would _dance_. Whenever it did it would send me flashes of wonder, like it couldn't believe what it was doing. The whole thing was fairly whimsical, and it helped me pass the time.

As far as reincarnations go, this one was off to a great start. Whoever it was in the celestial bureaucracy who let the paperwork slip through the cracks, I was grateful to them. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to come back to life with a head full of memories and a spirit nestled away cruxwise, but I was glad I did. At least this way, I could learn from my mistakes, and my little buddy would make sure I didn't suffer the crushing loneliness that defined my last life.

Still, all good things must come to an end. Just as things were looking up, they let me out of the hospital and everything turned to shit.

I got picked up from the hospital by a fucking _ninja_. At first, I thought maybe it was just my older brother and he happened to have a Naruto fetish. I mean, I was in japan after all. But then there were three more of them, and they dropped me off at a god damn orphanage and left. I felt a little insulted that I'd been reduced to a D rank.

I tried to convince myself it was just some weird shit, but when they put me with the other babies I gave up on that train of thought. From the moment I arrived, staring at me with the big blue eyes, was a little blond haired Asian boy with whisker marks on his cheek.

Now, I hadn't seen many blond haired Asian people. Maybe a couple of K-pop idols once, but I was pretty sure no-one would bother to dye the hair of a baby. I tried to hold out hope that they were just weirdly, _weirdly_ obsessed with Naruto, but I could feel that clawing terror rising up again.

Now that I'd had a bit of practice with my buddy, I could recognise the sensation of something intruding in on me from fringewise. If that really was Naruto, I guess that would be the Kyūbi's chakra. It was weaker than before, so it was probably just fading away after the sealing. But that sensation more than anything else convinced me that this was actually happening. You can cosplay a baby, but an utterly believable facsimile of chakra? I couldn't imagine any way to fake that.

Which meant, against all logic and reason, I was stuck in an anime I'd never even got around to watching. Sure, I'd wanted to, but a thousand hours of a badly written kids show where people just keep pulling superpowers out of their ass and there's flashbacks to stuff that happened thirteen seconds ago? Who could actually sit through that?

I was starting to wish I had. There was a lot of crazy bullshit going to happen around here, and I was staring straight into the eyes of the guy it all happened to. Being far more familiar with fanon than canon was not a great way to survive around these parts.

 _Although_ , I thought, _I probably have some kind of plot armour_.

It's true, after all. People don't just get reborn into anime shows. I mean, maybe they do, but it was far more likely I was the main character of some unimaginative fucks bad fanfiction. I'd seen it enough times to assume that was probably the case, but it wasn't exactly like I could be sure.

No, I couldn't rely on that sort of thing. Assuming I was invincible was the best way to get myself killed. And for all I'd killed myself before, I had a surprisingly strong desire to live now.

Which was probably why I wanted to curl up into a little ball and turn into a gibbering screaming mess. This was the world where some guy had enacted a thousand year plan to grow a tree big enough to kill the entire planet. Where that guy had manipulated another guy into thinking he could brainwash everybody with unbeatable ninja magic. Where even if those guys were somehow defeated through a series of coincidences so unlikely that I was just going to have to assume they wouldn't happen, then some asshole on the moon would try to kamikaze it straight into the planet.

There were a series of world destroying catastrophes coming, and soon. I could run and hide and try to avoid this ninja bullshit all I wanted, but there wasn't really any running away from a planet killer. Which meant I was going to have to do something about this, because seriously any of a million things could go wrong.

These were not happy thoughts. _I just got here, this isn't fair!_ Picking fights with S class ninjas was suicide. These guys could control minds, become invincible, come back from the dead, blow up entire cities, and every single one of them was trained to kill you in your sleep. I was just some guy. I didn't have a demon sealed inside me, I didn't have a show named after me, I didn't have magic bullshit eyes that let me do whatever the fuck I wanted. How the hell was I going to stand a chance against _anybody?_

I was scared. I was really, really scared, and very little of it had to do with that demonic chakra pushing at me fringewise. _That_ , at least, I could push back against. And so I did.

My little buddy, _my chakra_ , pushed back hard. I think it was more scared than I was, truth be told. Whatever passive amount of Kyūbi chakra was trying to infiltrate me was blown away immediately, but I was still _scared_ and so my chakra kept pushing, and pushing, and that fear wouldn't go away because it was in my head my chakra didn't know that.

Then something snapped, like a rubber band stretched too far, and my finger bones sprouted out into little claws. Fingertips are one of the most sensitive parts of the body, and having them split open like a nine inch nail was driven through each one hurt like a motherfucker. But I think it was actually my confusion that seemed to stop my chakra raging.

 _WHAT?_

* * *

Authors notes: Because honestly, if you're reading this story chances are you would figure out pretty quickly that you were an SI. You've seen it too many times to question it when it happens to you.

Cruxwise and fringewise are awkward terms, for sure, but I needed something to show that chakra doesn't actually exist in the same dimensions people do. The byakugan can see chakra coils, but if you cut someone open you won't find them. And considering there's people that can phase, or enter a ghost dimension, or other crap like that, I'm working off the assumption that Naruto has a lot more than three directions in it's vector space.

As always, please review. This story can only get better if you kind people help me.


	4. Childhood arc - 2

Previously, in Bones: Kokakku has realised where he is, and reacted poorly.

* * *

 _White Knuckles, maybe it's not so bad - OK GO_

* * *

I wish I could say that I managed to get those bone claws hidden before somebody noticed them. Unfortunately, I was five weeks old and being sneaky isn't really something my body was capable of. There's also the small matter that they popped out in front of the freaking container of the the nine tailed beast. Hiding your nails from some old biddies is one thing, but from the Anbu watching this kid?

There was a flurry of movement, a lot of yelling in Japanese, and I was being held in the arms of some grey haired kid with glasses.

 _Holy shit, I think that's Kabuto_.

Every instinct I had was screaming at me to kill him. I mean he was _the guy_. By the end, he was going toe to toe with Sasuke and Itachi at the same time. He was one half of the entire Akatsuki army. I'm fuzzy on the details, but I'm pretty sure if he died now Madara would never get brought back.

But there was the small matter of everyone being on high alert. They were _already_ watching me like I was going to go bezerk and kill someone. I could feel the eyes trained on me behind expressionless masks even if I couldn't bring myself to look at them. If I made a move now, I'd be dead in an instant.

Also, I was _five weeks old_.

But I still didn't like being carried by the guy. So I did what any baby would do, and screamed my head off. Hey, I wasn't the only one; I could hear Naruto crying too. Although it did seem to be getting quieter. I think they were walking me out of the building, because his demonic chakra was fading too and it was getting brighter.

I wasn't really paying attention, to tell the truth. Because those were frikken _bones_ that had grown out of my fingers. There was only one guy I knew who could do that, and he was a descendant of Kaguya Ōtsusuki. Which meant I wasn't just some nobody, there was a good chance I was going to be pretty damn important to a lot of people, and there was no way to stop this from getting out.

 _Shit, Orochimaru is going to come after me_. The only reason he'd gone after Sasuke in the first place was because Kimimaro had been sick. If he found out about me, he'd definitely come after me. And I was currently being held by _Kabuto fucking Yakushi_. Yeah, he was going to find out.

 _Oh god, what if they realise I'm not a normal kid?_

I mean, I _wasn't_ a normal kid by any stretch of the word, but if Danzō discovered that there was a fully developed adult mind in my small frame? One that had future knowledge of all his fucked up little secrets? I knew way too much, I was way too dangerous to him. And they were _already watching me_. There's no way I _wouldn't_ be under surveillance now.

But panicking had already proved a dangerous proposition. I gently stroked my chakra, trying to soothe it. It bristled at my 'touch' but seemed to get the message all the same. At the very least, no more bones seemed to sprout from places they weren't supposed to.

If I lost my cool now, they would probably just execute me and be done with it. I mean, I had no idea whether or not that was the plan anyway, but...

Right. That way leads madness. Stay calm and evaluate the situation.

...Well. Apparently I'm a Kaguya, heir to the Shikotsumyaku bloodline. That's really freaking cool and all, but is that going to help me survive?

Probably, yeah. It was a stretch, it was the longest fucking stretch, but it _might_ just be possible for me to unlock the Tenseigan. After all, Nagato's Rinnegan had started out as a regular Sharingan. It was only after it was corrupted with his chakra that it evolved. Something to do with reconciling the bloodline of the Sage of Six Paths. And if the Kaguya and Hyūga clans really _were_ Ōtsusuki branch families, I might just be able to do the same thing.

I was barely a month old, and I was already planning bloodline theft. Oh yeah, they had reason to worry about me. If I was in charge of village security I would kill me in a heartbeat. It wasn't even like I could say I was loyal to Konoha. I just really didn't want to get squished like a bug, and right now the deck was stacked precariously high against me. But if I could find a way to stay under the radar for long enough, I might just make it through this.

That meant trying to actually convince people I was a normal kid. There wouldn't be any chance I could write down what I could remember of the series, the risk was just too high. And my memory was already spotty, so I really couldn't rely on any foreknowledge saving my ass in _fifteen years_ when it became relevant. If it wasn't for the fact that all I ate was milk, I wouldn't even remember what I had for breakfast.

Any plan I came up with had to be simple. Really simple. Steal a Byakugan and stay the fuck away from Danzō sounded pretty simple. I could... probably manage that.

I shifted my gaze up to Kabuto, who smiled gently back down at me. Even with my blurry baby eyes I could see a coldly calculating intelligence hiding behind his facade. _Yeah, I totally got this,_ I thought to myself sarcastically, before the gentle rocking of his walking lulled me down to sleep.

Stupid baby body with it's stupid baby reflexes.

* * *

I didn't wake up in a clandestine underground holding cell, which was nice. I _did_ wake up to an iryō-nin using chakra scalpels to cut away my bone claws, which threw me a bit. And by cut away my bone claws I don't mean shave them down to size, but he was actually cutting through the joint at the end of my fingers and pulling out the bones.

It was uncomfortable, but surprisingly painless, so they must have drugged the hell out of me.

I sent a little feeler cruxwise to see what my chakra had to say about it. It felt apathetic, like I did on my first course of SSRI's, so I rolled with the assumption that they had some damn good anaesthetics in this world.

I made little murmuring sounds, like a real baby would if they hadn't made up their minds whether or not to cry, and tried to yank my hand back. Hey, if I was going to blend in here, I really needed to sell it.

The medic made little cooing noises back at me. Either he specialised in pediatrics, or he was just really good with kids, but he seemed pretty relaxed for a guy performing surgery on an unruly child in his arms. Especially one who could grow spiky spiky bone claws. As he finished with one hand and started working on the next, he spoke softly in Japanese. He had a deep voice, smooth like silk, but it only served to agitate me. The thought of having to learn an entirely new language was annoying as all hell. Sure, I'd always wanted to be bilingual, but it's a hell of a lot of effort when you get down to it. Then again, learning to talk all over again would go a long way to solidifying my cover as your usual ignorant child.

My hand felt _wrong_ , and I tried to raise it to get a good look at it. I'd learned a small amount of coordination at the hospital, but my body still felt the wrong size and I was weak in all kinds of weird places, so it wasn't the easiest thing to do. The result ended up being more of a half hearted wave, but it was enough. No broken skin, but my fingertips seemed kind of limp and floppy. They were definitely missing the bones that should have made up the ends of them. Either regrowing bones was something medics couldn't do, or they just expected me to do it on my own. Was this a test?

With my chakra in the state it was in, I didn't want to attempt anything right now. Sure, I could probably wrangle it into working order, but it hardly seemed worth the effort to piss off my buddy right now. Damn chakra could be a surly bastard when it wanted to be.

So I resigned myself to floppy fingers for the time being. I could probably sort it out later.

* * *

Turns out, I _do_ regenerate bone given enough time. I didn't even need to think about it, it just sort of happened. Although it was pretty distracting. It didn't hurt, because my body had left open cavities inside for the bone to grow into, but it felt _weird_.

I didn't see Naruto or Kabuto again. They probably transferred me to a different orphanage. Makes sense, in a way, because keeping the scary bone kid around the jinchūriki sounds like a recipe for disaster. Kabuto going missing was a different story, but I suspected he was just more valuable keeping an eye on Naruto for the time being, and transferring him along with me would have raised too many questions.

The orphanage they placed me into was... well, I can't say it was _nice_ but it was certainly crowded. A lot of people got orphaned in the wake of the Kyūbi disaster, if the overcrowding was any indication. It was long after I could crawl that I could really get a picture of the place, but it was made of three wooden buildings in a U shape, with the boys on one end and the girls on the opposite end. The middle building was the canteen, where we all ate, as well as general administration. Something resembling a 'playground' was in between the buildings, although it was really just a big dirt field.

Trying to keep yourself entertained in that sort of environment was hard. There was a ton of ratty old books, but most of them had pages missing, scribbles all over them, or were otherwise utterly illegible. Especially considering they were written in fucking _kanji_. Playing with blocks and teething on rubber kunai was beneath me, but I forced myself to do it all the same. Mostly, I just threw stuff around in frustration, and I'm sure they thought I was a very angry child.

As soon as I could walk, I was out there playing with the other kids. Since I was toddling, it wasn't exactly like I could play king of the hill with the big boys, but I made do by scrounging up other kids to play tag with. Gotta get that practice running and dodging somehow, and it would be suspicions for an infant to start doing pushups and squats, so this was really the only conditioning I could get away with. Also, it was really satisfying to slap them down every once in a while.

Now, I never used to hate little kids. But after spending _years_ forced into their company all day every day? I had some issues. They were stupid, and clumsy, and smelled bad, and they never shut up. Being surrounded by them was only bearable because it gave me some idea of how to act my age. Otherwise, they were the most insufferable little cretins I could imagine.

The caretakers knew there was something different about me. I was too quiet, too angry, too willing to be by myself. But they were overworked as all hell. As long as I didn't cause problems, I was just another tragedy, a statistic if I registered at all.

My only real friend in that place was my chakra. It seemed oddly sympathetic, as much as an extradimensional energy construct could seem like anything. We spent a lot of time playing together.

I could use my chakra to stick to things before I could walk. I was _careful_ when I practiced, but in the dead of night, my hands wrapped around them tight enough that it looked like I was just holding them, I liked to pick up my toys. Just pick them up, slightly too loose to actually hold if I wasn't using chakra. Such a little thing, but it brought me joy every time. Sometimes after a shower I'd try to get a water drop to stick to my skin. Sometimes I tried to see if I could walk through the loose dirt outside without leaving footprints, but that was a lot more dangerous. Occasionally, if I could slip away, I'd hole myself up somewhere deep and dark and channel my chakra into a visible purple light in my palms. Then, I'd try to isolate either the yin or the yang side, shifting it's colour a little more red or blue.

I prayed to god I had no Hyūga watching me, but if I did nothing ever came of it. I certainly wouldn't be in any position to do something about it if they confronted me after one of these little sessions, because making glowing lights come out of the palms of your hands is _tiring_. It would generally take a day or two to recover from it, and during that time I really didn't want to do much of anything at all.

I wanted to try manipulating bones, but it was out of the question. If anyone caught me, I was certain they'd assume hostile intent. And what was I supposed to do, hide a pile of bones under my pillow? There wouldn't be any way to get rid of them if I grew them, and there would have been no way to cover that up.

So I bid my time and waited. I was getting pretty good at that.

* * *

Authors notes: For those that don't know what the Tenseigan is, it's the thing that allowed a guy to _cut the fucking moon in half_. I haven't actually watched the movie, so I don't know if Toneri was drawing on some other power source when he did it, but either way it's pretty fucking OP.

Please review! Unless you're just going to tell me that Madara unlocked the Rinnegan himself before implanting it in Nagato. Just because you and I know that, doesn't mean our narrator does.


	5. Childhood arc - 3

Previously, on Bones: Kokakku has something resembling a plan, but he can't do much from the orphanage.

* * *

 _Who needs enemies, when you've got friends? - Cooper Temple Clause_

* * *

"So, little Kokakku, what do you think about being a ninja?"

I knew I should have been paying more attention to the ninja recruiter visiting the orphanage, but hearing my name had a way of distracting me lately. Mostly because I'd finally found out what it means. Spoiler alert: it's Japanese for _bones_. Someone had a sick sense of humour.

"Hmm? Did you say something?" The other kids at the orphanage giggled at me. I had a bad habit of zoning out, and they all knew it.

The recruiter narrowed his eyes at me. From what I could tell, this was his day off from teaching at the academy and he'd decided to spend it 'inspiring' the next generation of troops. I'm quite certain he didn't appreciate my disrespect.

Still, he stifled his hostility with a sigh. "Kokakku, we've been talking for an hour about what it means to be a ninja. Are you telling me you weren't paying attention at _all?_ Most boys your age love to talk about ninja."

He had me there. For most six year olds, being a ninja was just about the coolest thing ever. When we didn't feel like being all rough and tumble outside, they would often just stand there and shout out the most ridiculous jutsu they could think of. Then there were constant arguments about who beat who, and which made up jutsu was better, and it would all eventually devolve into an impromptu wrestling match until one of the caretakers broke it up. Playing ninja with a bunch of war orphans was considerably more vicious than playing ninja with the sheltered civilian families.

The thing was, I didn't think ninja were all that cool. I thought they were _terrifying_. There were kids out there that had been told to kill fully grown men at age _five_ , and they could _do it_ as well. The gulf of power between a regular civilian and someone as low as an academy dropout was extreme enough, let alone the gulf between a D class and an S class shinobi. And the people I was planning to fight, they were considerably worse than S class.

What did I think about being a ninja? If I thought it would do me any good, I would stay as far away from it as I could.

" _Obviously_ I want to go to the academy, shinobi-san." Here, the other kids giggled again. This guy had told us his name like a dozen times, and I still couldn't remember it. "But there's not much point sitting around _talking_ about being a ninja, when I could actually just be _being_ a ninja." Here, some of the other kids started nodding in agreement. The orphanage was _boring_ and we wanted to just go to the academy already.

The recruiter started nodding along too, "But being a ninja is a lot of hard work Kokakku-chan. How do you know you could keep up with classes if you can't even keep up with this conversation?"

Was he trying to get a rise out of me? Did he get his kicks out of bullying little kids or was this a test? _Do you work for Danz_ _ō, mister ninja?_

One of the fringe benefits of having the body of a little kid is that it made the suspicious look I gave him far less serious than it would have been coming from an adult. (I should know. I'd been practicing my suspicious looks in the mirror.) The guy had a bandana style hitai-ate, and long silver hair coming down to his standard issue flak jacket. He was either late teens or early twenties, with no discern-able battle wounds. When he'd walked in, there was no signs of pain or old injuries and he walked like a civilian. All this meant he was either a really bad shinobi, or a really good one. But he was pretty enough to encourage kids to be ninja, rather than scare them off with gnarly scars and missing limbs.

I really didn't remember his name either. Water-something-or-other. It really didn't seem important when he'd said it, so he wasn't one of the main characters for sure. But most Root agents didn't even have names, so there was no way to know for sure.

Well, if it was a test, maybe I should just rise to the challenge. With a smirk, I said, "Try me."

* * *

I entered the academy the following semester. That first day, looking up at the building where I was going to learn how to _survive_ , with Hokage Rock in the background glowing with the light of the early morning sun, I had just one thought.

 _It's too early for this shit_.

And then it was a blur of standardised education, Japan style. There was more bowing that I remember from my first time in school, making kids stand in the hallway with buckets full of water was a real punishment, and there were four god damn written languages I had to remember. Oh yeah, and Naruto Uzumaki was in my class.

Honestly, I tried to ignore him as much as possible, but the kid was _loud_. It was all hokage-this and hokage-that and the constant distraction made it hard to puzzle out what these kanji were supposed to mean.

I was just glad the recruiter asshole from the orphanage wasn't teaching my class. It would be embarrassing for him to see me struggle after I'd made a point of staring him down.

Still, my hypothetical embarrassment couldn't be any worse than Naruto's actual embarrassment, after he got sent out of class for being a nuisance. Holding buckets on the first day was rough, but watching him try to make friends at recess was worse. I didn't know whether the other kids were told to stay away from him or if they just thought he was as annoying as I did, but he got rejected by everyone he approached until he just gave up and sat on a swing by himself.

It broke my heart, especially when he started crying, but there was no way in hell I was just going to walk up to the Kyūbi jinchūriki and try to be his friend. I doubt they'd let me get within ten meters of him.

So instead, I caught the eye of some of the other orphanage kids, drew a circle on the ground using some chalk I'd swiped from the classroom, and hollered, "I'm the king of the castle, I'm the king of the castle!"

The kids with parents might not have understood, but the orphanage kids knew a challenge when they heard one. Instantly, I was bull-rushed by three older boys. I didn't recognise them, so they may well have moved out of the orphanage before I was old enough to interact with people, but they clearly knew the game well.

When the boy in front came within range, I latched onto his overextended arm. Throwing my weight away from him, I managed to roll him across my back with enough force to leave him tumbling out the opposite side that he came in. The thrill of success was short lived, however, as the second boy was right behind him and it only took a gentle nudge for him to shift my unbalanced weight to follow the first boy.

As I tumbled out of the ring, I caught a glimpse of my attacker whirling on the spot to clinch the third boy. Instead of a battle of leverage, these two had decided to turn it into a contest of pure strength, feet scrabbling for purchase as they each tried to out muscle the other.

By this point, other boys were starting to rush over to the game. The girls seemed to turn their noses up at it, even the one girl with her hair up in two little buns that I was sure would have been up for some roughhousing. Me and the boy I'd thrown out of the ring looked at each-other, nodded and sprinted back towards the wrestling boys, aiming to take out their legs. The temporary truce would last just long enough for us to get the other boys out of the ring, and then we'd be at each-others throats again.

Or so I thought. He stuck his leg out and got me with an ankle hook before we even got close to the ring. I went down hard, sacrificing the safety of a tumble in order to keep my eyes on the spectacle in the ring. The two wrestlers hadn't even registered his arrival before he ducked low, driving his full momentum into the back of the knees of the boy in front. All three went down, but the boy who'd been hit managed to tuck his legs between himself and his opponent, kicking out to send them flying from the ring.

Even the kids who hadn't been at the orphanage knew a good thing when they saw it, and were trying to get involved. I saw a kid with an Uchiha fan on the back of his shirt give a roar and then just swan dive straight onto the dog pile forming in the ring.

The battleground was chaos for the rest of the game. We'd never fought quite so dirty at the orphanage, with one kid even sicking his dog on us. Half the time it was all I could do to jump out of the way, but I got a few decent throws in there. Trying to overpower the larger boys was a losing battle, and the ones with taijutsu training could easily use joint locks and armbars on me, so I spent a lot more time out than I did in. Still, it was the best game I'd ever played.

Then Naruto had to go and try to join in, and the whole game came to a crashing halt.

It wasn't even like the other kids cared. He hadn't hurt anyone, he'd barely had enough time for someone to notice he was there, but then a sharp whistle caught our attention and called us to a stop.

That silver haired chūnin asshole seemed furious. And he certainly acted furious too, yelling about how such a game was undignified for ninja-in-training and how we were disrespecting the academy by planning to go to class so dirty. Looking down at my oversized T-shirt, I had to agree. It had started the day white, but now it was a dusty brown with big smudges all across it. At least my cargo shorts were already brown, but I'm sure exactly nobody would accept that as a defence.

Still, I was suspicious. The game had run for a fairly long time before he'd intervened, and there was a pretty good chance that orphans had been playing it long before I restarted the tradition. He didn't seem to be singling me out, either. So as much as I wanted to believe he just really enjoyed bullying little kids, I was pretty sure it was personal, and it was Kyūbi related.

Shit, if someone came along and broke up the fun whenever Naruto got involved, no wonder the other kids didn't want to play with him.

Going back to class after that was sullen. One kid even muttered "Good going _Naruto_ " and pushed him into a wall, all of which was a clear indication that he'd had previous experience with Naruto coming along and ruining everyone else's fun.

He stayed quiet in class for a blessed half an hour, which was enough time for me to puzzle through some of the kanji for the different countries. _I think that one says_ _Daimyō but I'm really not sure. Maybe it's just governor? I don't even really know what this paragraph is about..._

His silence didn't last long though. Naruto was off and yelling again in almost no time at all, and I silently cursed him for it. It was _impossible_ to concentrate with him nattering on. I couldn't wait for the teacher to kick him to the hallway again, even if I did feel like an asshole for thinking it. Chosen One or not he was a bothersome little shit right now and I didn't have the patience for it.

The end of the school day couldn't come fast enough. I didn't even wait for the teacher to finish giving out homework assignments, just jumped straight out the window as soon as I heard the chimes. Luckily our classroom was on the ground floor, but I genuinely didn't care at that point. I just needed to get out of there.

 _Worst day of my life, man_.

* * *

That was pretty much how life went for the next few weeks. Get up at an ungodly hour, curse the orphanage for the millionth time for not giving coffee to six year olds, try to puzzle out how to read this bullshit fucking language god damn, ignore Naruto with all my strength and occasionally practice punching someone in the face.

I gotta admit, the last part was pretty fun.

They'd put me in the higher ranked taijutsu class, with all the clan kids, simply because I wouldn't hold back in a fight. It wasn't that I had any real skill in punching people in the face, I just hit hard enough that they had to put me in full contact sparring just to spare the other kid. Hey, where I'm from 90% of fights are won just by coming at your opponent harder than they come at you. It worked here too, judging by how often I seemed to win.

Still, before every fight I had to send a silent request to my chakra, asking it not to get involved. It definitely had a mind of it's own when it came to fighting, and on instinct it would boost me to the point that I might accidentally kill someone. Six year olds had pretty fragile skull bones, and I still remembered those claws that came out the last time I let my guard down.

I was pretty sure that meant I was fighting with a handicap compared to everyone else. If chakra really was that instinctive to people around here, they were probably boosting as hard as they could when the fighting got intense. It would go a ways to explaining why everyone was faster and stronger than me.

That was okay. I had a plan for that, it would just take time.

Still, after a particularly rough workout that day (the academy had 'introduced' me to basic calisthenics, so I finally had an excuse to practice them) I was feeling too bushed to settle for the food at the orphanage. Every academy student was given a basic stipend, and I had plenty left over to splurge on dinner once in a while, so I decided to treat myself and get takeout.

Street ramen probably wasn't what most people would consider a treat, but I really wanted to see what all the fuss was about with Ichiraku and I'd never had the opportunity before.

When I walked in and saw Naruto sitting at the counter, I almost walked straight back out again. The old man behind the counter noticed my hesitation, and gave me a disapproving frown. I guess he'd seen that a lot over the years.

It wasn't like I really wanted to snub Naruto, I just didn't want to be around him. But that sounded like a weak excuse to treat him the way everyone else did, so I figured I could at least stay on the other side of the room from him and hope he didn't notice me.

I'd actually made it halfway through a bowl of beef ramen (with an _egg_ cracked in it. Fucking Japan) before Naruto noticed me.

"Hey! Hey! You're that guy with the weird hair! You're in my class!"

 _Volume control, little buddy_. I bit back my first response (and my tongue, as well. It's rude to talk to people while they're eating) and instead all I could think to mumble was, "My hair isn't weird..."

"Uh huh! It is _too_ weird, dattebayo." and he actually followed this up with nodding his head super seriously, like he'd just solved on of the great mysteries of the universe.

Okay, so maybe bone white hair was a _little_ weird, but I was in a freaking shōnen anime. I didn't even have close to the weirdest hair. And prematurely grey was a million times better than prematurely bald, like I'd been in my last life. I _liked_ my hair. I tried to deflect with, "What about that weird pink hair girl then?"

"Hey! Sakura isn't weird, she cute!" He was legitimately pointing his finger at me, and bits of food were flying out of his mouth as he yelled. This kid was never going to make it as a ninja. No matter how hard he ever tried to be subtle, there was no fixing this.

I really didn't want to dignify that with a response. I rolled my eyes, and as I turned back to my noodles I said, "Yeah, that's real fascinating buddy."

I was really hoping he would get the hint and stop talking to me. Instead, he shuffled a couple seats over until he was sitting right next to me. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eyes as I was blowing on my noodles, and he was squinting right in my face.

"What's your deal anyway?" He didn't seem angry, but more like he was genuinely confused.

I thought that was pretty rich, coming from the guy that was insulting me and invading my personal space. It wasn't like I could expect him to know better, but he would have got his ass beat for this kind of behaviour at my orphanage. The kids he lives with must really avoid him like the plague.

I considered the best way to respond to this. Should I just be honest with him? I opened my mouth to respond, hesitated, and then said, "You're annoying."

"EH!?" he burst out with, and leaned back in his chair like I slapped him.

Quickly, I continued with, "You have terrible manners. You insulted my hair. You're always loud in class and that it makes it hard for me to concentrate. I don't hate you, I just don't like you either."

He almost looked on the verge of tears. His big blue eyes welled up, and I could see his lip tremble just the smallest amount before he controlled it. For someone who went through life getting shit on as much as he did, this kid was fragile as all hell.

But instead of bursting out in tears, he seemed to find some kind of resolve. "Then I'll _make_ you like me, you stupid jerk!" he yelled, eyes filled with conviction.

 _What a moron_. "That's really not the best way to start." I drawled, and he actually blushed.

I really thought that would be the end of it. Maybe I was still holding out hope he was going to leave me in peace. Then: "What do I have to do then?" and he looked at me with such hope filled eyes, I couldn't find it in me to say no to the kid.

Shit, all he'd really have to do is shut up. And if he _did_ open his mouth, not be a jerk about it. "Learn to use your inside voice. And stop insulting people." I said, trying not to sound condescending. I know I was talking to a child, but I was trying not to talk down to him like a child. Even if this was the most basic advice I'd ever given.

He did that over exaggerated nod again. I began to wonder if I'd ever see him with a blank face. He was just too expressive. Softly he said, "Yeah. I can do that, 'ttebayo." He seemed like he really meant it. He was quiet for the rest of the time we sat there, his face screwed up in thought.

I didn't think his new behaviour would last for long, but at least it let me finish the rest of my meal in peace.

* * *

Authors Notes: I had a lot of fun writing that conversation. Looks like this story is starting to go somewhere. Sharp eyed readers will note that yes, that was Mizuki-sensei.

Please review! Yes, that means you, guy reading this sentence.


	6. Childhood arc - 4

Previously, on Bones: Kokakku has started at the academy, and Naruto has decided to be his friend for some reason.

* * *

 _But I don't mind it so much, because as long as I'm not there - Gnarls Barkley_

* * *

The very next day saw me standing bucket duty outside of class with Naruto.

The trouble started that morning when he marched into the classroom and plonked himself down beside me without a word. This was already unusual. We didn't exactly have assigned seating or anything, but after a few weeks of class everyone had settled into a comfortable arrangement, and then here he was disrupting that. I was determined to ignore him and kept my gaze forwards, waiting for class to start, but the hyperactive blond boy had other plans.

"Heya Kokakku! How ya doing?" he yelled in my ear, far too cheerful for such an early hour.

Sighing, I rolled my head to the side to glare at him. "What did I say yesterday about your inside voice?" I asked rhetorically.

"Hehe, oops." He gave me a foxy grin and rubbed the back of his head with embarrassment. I just rolled my eyes and went back to trying to figure out the kanji on the board.

Soon enough, class started, with only a minimum of pestering from Naruto while I waited. It was actually pretty easy to tune him out when he kept his voice down, and he didn't seem to mind so much that I wasn't actually paying attention to him. I think he just needed to run his mouth, regardless of whether or not anyone was actually listening.

His 'indoor voice' lasted up until the teacher was in the middle of an explanation about the demilitarisation of Yugakure, when he blurted out, "Huh? I don't get it!"

To be fair to him, I didn't get it either. Sometime after the end of the last war, the hidden village of our neighbouring country (the Land of Hot Water) had decided they didn't want to be a hidden village anymore, and gave up on all this ninja business. Sure, there were still an abundance of ninja there, but they didn't take contracts anymore and were calling themselves 'the village that has forgotten wars' which was a bit rich considering the damage they'd done against Kumo in the last war.

Personally, I wondered what their Daimyō thought of the retirement of all his shinobi, but unlike Naruto, I was wiling to wait for an explanation. Honestly, you at least let the guy finish before you badger him with questions, and Naruto hadn't even done that - he'd just blurted out his ignorance and hoped for the best.

So I'd like to think I was justified in the swift punch to the leg that I gave him. Judging from his reaction, he felt otherwise.

"Hey! What the hell!" Not content with yelling, Naruto jumped up out of his seat and started rubbing his leg with an over exaggerated wince.

"Naruto! Settle down!" the teacher shouted, and I just tried to shrink in my seat to avoid drawing attention to myself.

"Screw you, 'ttebayo!" Naruto shouted back, "That bastard just hit me and I want to know why!" He was pointing at me, rendering moot any attempt I had made to avoid getting dragged into his mess.

"That's it! Both of you, buckets, now!" To punctuate his proclamation, he flicked two pieces of chalk, nailing us both in the foreheads with a surprising amount of pain. We both scarpered out of the room to avoid any further wrath, Naruto rubbing his head as he went.

We'd been standing in the hallway long enough for the weight of the buckets to start making my shoulders ache before he spoke up again. At least he had the good sense to make sure Sensei had gone back to his lesson before drawing any more attention to us.

"What was all that about, huh?" he whispered, and even his whispers were loud. Like a stage whisper, when you want to make sure you're being overheard, but in this case I suspected it was accidental.

"You were being loud again," I began. "I just wanted to stop you getting into trouble."

"Well fat lot of good _that_ did us," he huffed.

A few more minutes went by before he aired, "My leg still hurts you know."

"Oh come _on_ ," I replied sarcastically, "I barely even touched you."

"Yeah? Well just you wait until taijutsu," he threatened. "I'm going to kick your ass, dattebayo!"

It was a little hard to take him seriously with the mark the chalk had left still decorating his forehead.

* * *

I was starting to suspect my association with Naruto might be a problem.

In class, I got punished along with him, regardless of the reason. I guess the teacher figured if I was going to be his friend I should be responsible for him. But if I ever tried to correct his behaviour myself, I got punished, and Naruto got punished along with me. Even if we both acted like model students, Sensei always seemed to find a fault with _something_ and gave out punishments like candy.

All the hours spent standing in the hallway with those stupid buckets in my hands did little to help my grades, and I really didn't appreciate Naruto dragging me into his bullshit. But it wasn't like I could just tell the kid to stop sitting next to me. He was determined to be my friend, regardless of how I felt about it, and would stick to me like glue no matter what I did to dissuade him.

As bad as the punishments were in class, at least they usually had an excuse, no matter how flimsy the pretence. Outside, it was worse. Mizuki seemed to make it his personal mission to fuck with us, and we'd get in trouble just by being near each other. Interestingly, in this case we were never assigned any punishments to serve together, and Naruto got the brunt of it. I genuinely felt Mizuki just didn't want the little kid to have any friends.

That silver haired pretty boy was going to get himself killed, ostracising a jinchūriki like that. I don't know if he was just following orders or if he was serving some personal vendetta, but either way Naruto had noticed that the recess punishments only ever came from him. That wasn't going to end well.

All of this attention served to drive a wedge between me and the other students as well. It wasn't that I was particularly keen to hang out with a bunch of kids, but gaining a reputation as a troublemaker was annoying. I was going to have to work with these people some day, after all. As much as I wanted to dismiss the ones who were too stupid to reform their opinion of me years later, I recognised that was probably the majority of them. Out of date intel, rumours and speculation was the lifeblood of a ninja. I wouldn't be surprised if my schoolyard reputation came back to me from the mouths of foreign nin some day.

As time dragged on and it only seemed to get worse, I decided something had to be done and dragged Naruto off into the village one day after class.

Naruto was pretty happy with this change in routine. Normally, I dove out the window the second class ended, and ran as fast as I could all the way home in an effort to avoid him. Today, I'd actually hung around with a muttered, "I need to talk to you."

Of course he pestered me with questions, but I managed to get him to shut up with a quick "not here." I don't know if he got the hint this was something big, if he was just so excited to actually go somewhere with his 'friend' or if he was genuinely getting better at behaving himself, but he quietened down after that.

Gathering my books - _Fire Country and her Allies, Introduction to Traps and Tricks_ and _The Nine Chapters_ (a combined mathematical and astronavigational textbook) - I stuffed them in my ratty old backpack with my set of practice kunai and shuriken, a spare change of clothes and my writing supplies. Would you believe they expected us to learn to write with a fucking ink brush? Any respectable ninja would rather carry around a pack of grease pencils, but I guess we had to accommodate any budding fūinjutsu users in the class. It was a rare and more importantly valuable talent, so any encouragement they could get would and did get forced on us. Personally, I thought teaching a bunch of six year olds something as exacting as caligraphy would just make us all hate it more, but then I wasn't in charge of the academy curriculum.

I wasn't the last person out of the class, but I was still getting sideways looks for using the door instead of the window. Even the teacher looked suspicious.

 _Am I really that bad?_ So maybe I couldn't blame Naruto for _all_ of my growing reputation.

We ran together to one of the training fields. I purposefully avoided routes through the middle of town, and ended up at one slightly further out than I would have wanted to run on my tiny little legs. Sure, I could have walked, but the huffing and puffing kept conversation to a minimum. The less talking Naruto did, the better I felt around him. Even if it did mean running so hard I thought my lungs were going to burst. I may not smoke any more, but for some reason my body still feels like a smokers body. I guess some things never leave you.

When we finally arrived, I collapsed onto the grass in exhaustion. I took a moment to find a comfortable position, where I could breath easily and my posture felt strong, and then called on my chakra to start cleaning out lactic acid and oxygenating my blood.

I turned my senses cruxwise to see what its response would be. Mild amusement, with a tinge of sarcasm. Like it knew I could have avoided all this bother just by asking it to help from the start, and thought I was being silly about the whole thing. I shot back a gentle thank you, laced with my gratitude and matching its amusement with my own, and my chakra seemed to work a little harder to clear out my aching muscles. Then I turned my senses fringewise, to see what Naruto's chakra was doing.

Nothing. I couldn't sense anything from him. I frowned, and propped myself up on my elbows to get a better look at him. He seemed perfectly fine, like he hadn't even been sweating, so I guess he used his chakra for the whole run. That would excuse him not drawing heavily on it now, but it bothered me that I couldn't sense _anything_ from him. I used to be able to, when we were both babies.

Then again, this was my first attempt at actively sensing out someone else's chakra. I gently coaxed my own chakra to sniff him out, but any chakra I sent too far fringewise just dissipated. No infomation returned.

I decided to forget about it for now, because Naruto looked like he'd had enough of the silent act and I was pretty sure he'd explode if I ignored him any longer. I made a sort of vague hand gesture at him to let him know to start talking, then used that arm to push myself the rest of the way into a proper sitting position.

Without any preamble, he rushed into it. "So what's this all about, huh? Why'd you drag me to a training field? Are we gonna play ninja? Can I be the Fourth Hokage?"

As much as the idea of a ninja in training playing ninja amused me, this was serious business. "Naruto, we can't be friends at school anymore."

"What? Why not?" he asked.

"I mean..." I began, "We're always getting in trouble. I don't think the teachers like us."

He looked at the ground. Quietly, he said, "Yeah, I think you're right."

Quickly, I said, "but that doesn't mean we can't be friends!" and his head snapped up at me, eyes filled with hope, just like the first time we'd met. I continued, "We just have to hang out outside of school."

He screwed his face up in concentration. Slowly, he said, "So we'd be... sneaking around? Just like real ninja?" He seemed to grow more excited as he spoke.

"Just like real ninja Naruto." I nodded. "We can come here after school, and train, and one day we'll _be_ real ninja."

"Yeah!" he yelled. "We can come here every day, and train and stuff, and when we get stronger I'll be Hokage! This is going to be so cool dattebayo!"

I laughed at his enthusiasm. I'd just told him to his face that he couldn't be seen with me at school anymore, and he was happy about it. Then I thought back on what he said, and winced. "Well," I hesitated, "maybe not _every_ day." I'd definitely need some time to decompress if I was around him too long.

He threw his head back and laughed. "Yeah yeah. But we can train today right?"

I thought about it. My throwing skills weren't the best. Throwing knives had always seemed like the stuff of movies, and shuriken were just totally alien to me. But I was also having trouble in taijutsu. I had a tendency to rush in, and accept getting hit if it meant I could hit them as well. It served me pretty well now, when no-one could hit that hard, but it would get me into trouble in the field when people were using knives not fists.

Well, maybe I could kill two birds with one stone. Practice kunai weren't _too_ sharp...

"Sure," I smiled, all teeth. "Have you ever played catch before?"

* * *

Authors Notes: If you squint really hard, you can see a hint of foreshadowing in this chapter.

The Nine Chapters is a real book, although sadly it doesn't have any astronomy in it. It's an ancient Chinese mathematical text, that details Gaussian Elimination (if you're struggling with high school math, learn this!) a shocking _sixteen hundred years_ before it would be reinvented by the western world.

Please review!


	7. Childhood arc - 5

Previously, on Bones: Kokakku and Naruto have resorted to sneaking around to hang out. Kokakku is bothered that he can't sense Naruto's chakra.

* * *

 _Gotta be so strong - Ellie Goulding_

* * *

I trained with Naruto most days after school. On the days when his constant enthusiasm was too much for me, or on weekends, I trained something altogether more interesting.

Shikotsumyaku is a hell of a kekkei genkai.

At first, I'd been worried about showing off any ability with it. I genuinely had no idea how most people go about unlocking bloodline limits, but I'm pretty sure most aren't aware of them since birth. So I played it safe until after they'd shown us some basic chakra stuff at the academy, then used that as an excuse to start testing my limits. Me and my chakra were already on pretty good terms, so it wasn't like my control was terrible. I just kinda... asked my chakra, and it would do pretty much whatever I wanted it to do.

So in one sense of the word, growing bones was fairly painless. It was easy, even if it had quiet a chakra cost for my underdeveloped body. In another sense of the word, it was incredibly painful, probably the worst pain I'd ever felt in my life. This ensured I didn't train it as often as I probably should, but I made sure I got in a session at least once a week. Generally, I tried to form a bone knife or claws, but sometimes I'd mess around with my internal structure instead. Putting cross bracing on my ribs was one of my earlier projects, and definitely the most successful. Initially, it had been as protection against bone shattering hits, but in everyday use I'd found it actually helped me breath a lot easier. I still wasn't sure of the specifics why, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

One of my less successful projects was my disastrous attempt to give myself super hearing. My theory had been that since the ear bones carried the vibrations that made up sound, I should be able to get them to do it better somehow. I'd gone deaf for over a week, as I attempted to manipulate their shape, density, etc and somehow each attempt only made it worse. In the end I'd settled for figuring out how to get them back to where I started, although I'd never quite recaptured my ability to hear pitch. I just considered myself lucky that Japanese wasn't a tonal language, because in China that same mistake would have ruined my life.

It was almost enough to make me swear of any further experiments for the future, especially after I was made to stand in the halls carrying buckets for non-participation in class. I couldn't honestly say it wasn't my fault, but it still felt unfair. At least Naruto was keeping his distance at school.

Of course, internal manipulation went hand in hand with external manipulation. It hadn't actually occurred to me the first time I tested my bone claws, but the human body isn't built for retractable claws the way a cat's would be. I didn't know how to make chakra scalpels, so in order to get rid of them again I thought I would have to cut my fingertips off and just pray they grew back. My chakra felt me panic, and decided to merely dissolve some of the bone inside me and pull the rest of it back in. Turns out, I can reabsorb bone just fine, although I'm sure I never would have figured that out on my own.

Reabsorbing bone seemed to make me just the tiniest bit stronger too. I could almost understand it, because I know calcium plays an important role in nerve signalling and muscle fibre contraction, but surely that calcium would have already been in my body to make the bones in the first place. I just chalked it up as one of lifes great mysteries and resolved to hit my conditioning extra hard on days after I experimented with my kekkei genkai.

With Naruto, we tended to stick to the basic academy style of conditioning. It was really more of an extended warmup, with lots of stretching, jogging, pushups, situps and squats. Nothing terribly exciting, but it did get us nice and limber for any sparring practice we might do. On my own, I worked a lot harder to develop my upper range of strength. I knew a training field with some thick manila ropes hanging in it, which I would climb (although my hands were small enough I had to use my feet to assist me) and I did a ton of handstands, the stability work doing wonders to keep my shoulders healthy. I spent extra time making sure my core was thick and strong, with L sits, bridge wall walks and some _very_ slow cartwheels up against the wall.

For my legs, I lamented the loss of plate loaded barbells. Without squats, power cleans and deadlifts I was always going to be smaller and weaker than I would have liked, but I got a surprising amount done with just sprints and jumps. I had certain target tree stumps that I'd attempt to get on top of with just one leg, or from a further and further distance. I had sandy riverbanks to run along, which strengthened my lower legs, and hills to sprint up, which strengthened my upper legs. I made do, and told myself that moving only my own bodyweight made more sense than training with weights because in the end it was my own body that I needed to move in a fight. I tried to ignore the memories of sumo wrestlers and strongmen and football players that dominated physical contests in my past worlds history.

I was never going to be that big. Even at six, I got the impression I was going to be a scrawny little runt for the rest of my life. Partly, that was due to the malnutrition all orphans suffered from due to the small portions at the orphanage, and partly it was due to me working twice as hard as everyone else physically, by constantly restraining my chakra augmentation. It didn't help that I was gently coaxing my tiny frame to grow just a little bit faster, trying to get to an adult size as soon as possible.

That was a hell of a slow process. If I stretched them too far too fast, my skin or muscles would tear and I'd have to shrink them again to let my body heal itself. Even if I paced myself, I found myself suffering a dull ache in my tendons for days, and I was adding mere millimeters at a time. Still, if it would all be worth it for a reach advantage. Being taller than everyone else would help in both intimidation and pursuit. I just had to keep reminding myself that it was all happening for a reason, as I ached through and through, snapped at everyone who had the misfortune to cross me in my bothered state, and fobbed off training because my body hurt too much already. It would all be worth it.

At least chakra control was working for me. I stuck to the tree climbing exercise for now as my high bone density and skeletal figure meant I sunk like a rock, and I panicked whenever I had to walk back along the bottom of a river. For now, it was all about building up my chakra capacity until I could do the water walking exercise without fear of drowning. It was a shame I couldn't grow skin like I could bones, because webbed hands and feet sounded really useful.

* * *

Even though he was older than me, I'd been at the academy a year when Hyūga Neji showed up. Most children from ninja parentage didn't start the academy until they were eight. It was marketed as an old wartime practice to keep them from testing out early and dying in the field before they hit double digits, but I suspected it was really to give them a couple extra years to learn clan techniques, in order to appear stronger and more capable than us peasants raised by civilians. Technically, us kids from the orphanage could have waited until we were eight as well. But orphans are broke as shit, and we wanted that academy stipend. Screw the honorable clans, us war orphans were the real ninjas. Even working for a hidden village, shinobi are glorified mercenaries, and we knew the game young.

So when I enrolled at the age of six, it wasn't because I wanted to test out early. Although there are privileges associated with rank, I had no idea what kind of training was available to the higher level ninja. Right now, I was being trained pretty well, and had free time to develop my skills in the direction I thought would benefit me. There was no guarantee that either of those things would happen after I graduated. But being underfed and under equipped when shit hit the fan was out of the question, and I'd need plenty of traveling money in my bug out bag should worst come to worst.

And realistically, it was my intention to make the worst come to pass. Watching Neji stride into the academy like he owned it from his very first day, I couldn't help but covet those eyes. My hand twitched reflexively in a grabbing motion when I saw those white white eyes, and I made effort to school my features before someone noticed my suspicious behaviour.

 _Too soon_ , I thought, but already the temptation was overwhelming. I wanted those eyes so fucking bad. They were my ticket to absolute power, and they were _right there_. The only obstacles in my way: the caged bird seal, my lack of medical training, the many eyes on us and my own weakness. I'd been scheming, but I had very little in the way of concrete plans right now. I could feel time ticking down, and even if I had eight years left to get them it wouldn't be enough. It takes at least that long to become a doctor in my old world, and that's not talking about a person who can barely read. I doubt any of them had to do a transplant on their own eyes, either. But being strong enough to force a medic into submission was beyond my imagination right now, let alone the level of skill I would need to abduct a Hyūga. Many men greater than me had tried, and they had all failed.

So, for now, I schemed, and glared at the pretentious asshole who would never unlock the power that was his true birthright.

And oh, was he pretentious. The very first time we interacted, I'd been training at the sand buckets the academy provided for the taijutsu specialisation kids. Every day I made sure to punch them at at least a hundred times each, full force with both a straight punch, a back fist and a hammer blow. This was an excellent way to build up the hands for striking. Do this for a long enough time, and the knuckles will swell into hard conkers that will ensure you strike twice as hard, and the delicate finger bones won't break nearly so easily when they meet someone's face at speed. The academy made sure we did this training with sand rather than blocks of wood, because sand hardened just as tough on impact and it was also able to move every so slightly out of the way, letting you get all the benefits of training with a wooden target but without the unforgiving shockwaves that would destroy your hands.

As a Hyūga, Neji was also a taijutsu specialist. I wasn't surprised when he made his own way over to the sand buckets, but I was surprised when he struck up a conversation with me.

"You're doing it wrong." he said.

"What? No I'm not." I replied.

"You are. Look." he said, then began to strike the bucket of sand with his fingertips.

Now, for the Jūken that might be fine, but I was hardly planning on ever striking someone with my fingertips. Clawing the shit out of them maybe, but for that all I really needed was grip strength.

I could have told him about the obvious distinctions between my style of taijutsu and his style of taijutsu, but for a supposed 'genius' he really should have figured that out for himself. Besides, I really wanted to wipe the floor with him in a spar and it would be best not to give him any advantage if I could help it. So instead I responded with, "This is the way the instructors told me to do it."

He scoffed, "they're wrong too."

Like I said, arrogant little shit.

* * *

"Hey Naruto?"

He actually _stumbled_. Was it really that unusual for me to make conversation while we were training?

"What's up?" he asked back.

"You uhh," I paused, "You met that Neji guy yet?"

We'd pretty much derailed training completely at this point. He slowed down to a stop in order to screw his face up in concentration like he always did. "I think so. He's the guy with the creepy eyes right?"

"Yep, that's him." I replied.

"Well what about him?" he asked, confused.

"Nothing really. I just think he's an asshole." I said.

Naruto's eyes bulged wide, then he let out a bark of laughter. I didn't understand what was so funny, until he choked out, "he has a personality after all! Man, here I was thinking you were dead inside."

I narrowed my eyes at him and growled. "I'll show you dead inside!" I yelled, then tore off in a charge after him. For all I was taller than him Naruto was still faster, so it was a long time before he let me catch him.

After our run, we were both lying on the ground, breathing heavily, but smiling. Normally we'd rush back to training, but today the sun was shining through the trees just right and I was feeling pretty content, so I didn't mind relaxing for once.

Of course, Naruto spoiled the good mood by declaring, "I just had an awesome training idea, dattebayo!"

I was skeptical, but I decided to hear him out. "Go on..." I said slowly.

"Well, Sensei is always saying ninja gotta make hand seals really fast in a fight, right?" He paused for clarification. At my nod, he continued, "so I was thinking, what if we tried to do them while we did those clapping pushup things you showed me? That way, we gotta do them really fast!"

It was actually not the worst idea I'd ever heard. Performing hand seals under a time limit in a high pressure situation, while also getting some strength training done? Hell, I wish I'd thought of it myself.

Of course, Naruto being Naruto it soon turned into a competition. We'd started off slow, but soon enough one hand seal became two hand seals, became three hand seals, and it wasn't long at all before it all went horribly wrong.

Naruto had miscalculated either how tired he was, or how many seals he could reasonably do. Either way, the result is the same. In the middle of making the bird hand seal, he hadn't managed to get his hands out of the way before he'd landed, and broke a finger. If it was me, I would have just popped the damn thing out and been on my way. Naruto, on the other hand, probably didn't regrow bones the same way I did.

"Come on baka, we're going to the hospital." I said, resigned. There goes the rest of my day of training.

"Huh? Won't it just heal like it does when we miss a catch with a kunai?" he asked.

"Bones don't heal like that," I explained, "you have to get them set straight or they'll heal all crooked." The fact that he was so blasé about an injury told me we should probably cut down on the amount of kunai we liked to throw at each other. Honestly, I was surprised neither of us had lost an eye yet.

He tried to get out of going the whole way to the hospital. He actually tried to run away at one point, but I don't think he even knew where the hospital _was_ because he ran straight towards it.

I had a firm grip on his collar and I was _this close_ to trussing him up and carrying him when I marched up to the admissions desk and said loudly, "Uzumaki Naruto, admitting for a broken finger."

The sloppy looking woman behind the front desk looked ten years too old and ten pounds too heavy to be an active duty ninja, but she was wearing a hitai-ate so I guess I had to accept that she'd just been deskbound for too long. She leveled a glare full of poison at Naruto, but with me there I suppose she figured she couldn't get away with turning him away, so she just sighed and said, "take a seat and we'll get to you as soon as we can."

"As soon as you can?" I asked back, with enough inflection that the subtext was _I know your game lady_.

Her glare shifted to me, but my poker face didn't break. She ground out, "That's what I said, isn't it?"

I glared back. I wasn't going to take shit from some homebody. "Better be fucking soon." I muttered, as I dragged a confused Naruto away from the exchange. I could feel a mild killing intent in the air following us to the seating area, but it didn't bother me.

As we settled in for a long wait, I tried to cast my senses fringewise. As always, there was nothing but an empty void in the space surrounding my chakra. I'd hoped the hospital at least would have a high enough concentration of powerful ninja that I'd sense _something_ , but it really did seem like anything that wasn't made of my chakra or actively invading my chakra was completely blind to me. The worlds most powerful ninja could be standing right in front of me and unless he was actively broadcasting his position I wouldn't have any clue he was there.

By the time we were seen, his finger had almost set. At the very least, the medic had to re-break it in order to get it to line up properly before he put it in a splint. He clucked disapprovingly at us the whole time, ignoring Naruto's shout of pain when broke the finger, and my own glares when he wrapped the finger up none too gently. It might have just been intimidation tactics, because when he told Naruto he wasn't allowed to use that hand for anything for at least a month or so help him he'd break the other fingers as well, Naruto actually listened.

But he still didn't stop bitching the entire month.

* * *

Authors Notes: if anyone is curious about the cartwheel core exercise Kokkaku was doing, Yuri Marmerstein has an excellent one arm handstand video on youtube (Steps and Preparation to Achieving One Arm Handstand, or extension ytjIgIe5CVQ). The exercise doesn't have a name as far as I know, but it's shown at the 2 minute mark. Kokakku isn't ever going to be an équilibriste of say, Cai Yong's level, but it's a pretty damn good way to strengthen your body when you don't have access to weights.

And yes, Rock Lee's way of training his strikes is really stupid. It's basic physics. Something has to give on impact, let's not make it your own body.

As always, please review.


	8. Childhood arc - 6

Previously, on Bones: lots of boring training stuff.

* * *

 _In a thousand years, or maybe a week - Porcupine Tree_

* * *

Looking back, Naruto breaking that finger was one of the most fortuitous things that happened during my academy days.

Being forced to keep his arm in a sling to avoid using that hand in combat, he had to learn to fight twice as hard with the other side. After he got tired of being beaten down time and time again, he forced _me_ to fight with an arm in a sling too. It was surprisingly difficult - far more so than I had suspected being down a limb would be. It wasn't just that I couldn't use it to attack, but I had to defend it twice as hard as well. Having my guard completely open on one side made me an easy target, and we quickly learned to develop strategies to protect it.

Naruto being Naruto, he decided that being down one limb wasn't enough and tried to fight me with _both_ arms in a sling. So I decided to strap one leg up, and try to fight by hopping around like an idiot. We both had so much fun doing it, we kept up the trick fighting even after his hand had fully healed.

All of which lead me to the moment I had my hands tied behind my back and a blindfold over my eyes. Naruto, conversely, had both hands free _and_ he could see. This was about as unfair as a fight between us had ever been, so I knew I was going to have to fight dirty.

Naruto might be a ninja in training, but the key words here were _in training_. So when he charged at me, there was the telltale sound of pebbles shifting underneath his feet to alert me the match had begun. He was stealthy enough that the rest of his steps towards me were completely silent, but I'd faced him enough times to have a good idea of both his speed and his favourite opening attack.

It was a cocky decision on my part, but I held off dodging his jumping overhand punch until the last moment. I could only imagine the look on his face, but it was still totally worth it.

Even if his follow up reverse kick struck me square in the ribs.

My initial instinct was to roll with the strike to gain distance. Executing a perfect combat roll with your hands tied behind your back would be difficult under the best of circumstances. Unpracticed, and recovering from an unexpected blow, it was just not going to happen.

The best I could manage was a sort of sideways rolly polly motion, and I actually had to push my head against the ground to give myself enough leverage to get back to my feet. In a real fight, Naruto could have ended me right there, but this was only a friendly spar, after all.

I had to go on the offensive, but right now I was all turned around. I was determinedly ignoring all sensory perception cruxwise, because my chakra was going bonkers with panic, and all I could smell was wet grass. I could hear the slow trickling of the river bordering the training ground, but Naruto himself was suspiciously quiet.

Lacking any better ideas, I took off towards the riverbank. If I could get Naruto to start splashing around out there, I would stand a much better chance of knowing where the next attack was coming from.

Suddenly, I tripped. Bastard must have got me with an ankle hook.

Luck was on my side, as I was already at the waters edge. So instead of faceplanting directly into the ground, I ended up submerged instead. I took the opportunity to tumble through the water and work my bound wrists underneath my feet, bringing my arms up in front of me.

There were a few _awful_ seconds, where all I could do was sink. I had no way of knowing which way was up, and my lungs had been almost completely empty when I went under. Adrenaline burned through my limited oxygen supply and made my lungs ache for breath.

I hit the bottom in a crouch, and exploded off with enough force to bring me above the surface of the water. I tugged my chakra down towards my feet and asked it to hold me up. I wobbled a fair amount due to a misjudged landing, but the end result was stable.

I heard Naruto shout "No fair!" and grinned. Rookie mistake to give away his position like that.

I had him now.

With chakra already flowing through my legs, my jump easily took me all the way to him. I didn't want to lose my bearings by doing any kind of crazy spin move, so I only attacked with a basic side kick, but I still tried my best not to telegraph the move until the last moment.

Judging by how he ended up between my legs flipping me over, he'd seen it coming anyway.

I threw my hands out to catch myself, and the impact tweaked my elbow pretty hard. Still, I managed to execute a damn near textbook cartwheel back to standing, and spun my trailing leg around in a reverse roundhouse kick.

When my heel failed to connect, I used the momentum to carry my other leg around into a regular roundhouse kick, which connected shin first with _something_.

"Ahh! Okay I give I give!" Naruto screamed out.

Surprised, I took the blindfold off. I blinked away the sudden brightness as I looked at him through bleary eyes. His arms were curled protectively around his sides.

"You okay?" I asked, concerned.

"Yeah." He winced, "I think you might have bruised a rib."

"Let me take a look at it." I said. I knew that second kick came in a lot faster than the first kick, but I didn't think I hit him _that_ hard...

"Maa, maa," he waved me off, "forget about that. How did you do that thing with the water?"

And so the rest of the day was devoted to teaching him about the tree climbing and water walking techniques.

* * *

It was mid autumn, and all the leaves blowing around the training field were starting to seriously piss me off. I spared a second to curse Hashirama for deciding his fucking trees had to be deciduous. Anything to distract me from the awful cramping in the front of my thighs as I struggled to hold a straddle L sit for another few seconds.

Sweat trickled down my brow, and I asked my chakra to coat my eyes, in order to keep them from getting flushed with burning salty liquid. Unfortunately the split in my attention was enough to cause me to sink to the ground, and I gave up any further compression training as a bad job.

I took a few seconds to stand up, shake myself out and get loose again, then arched over backwards to land in a bridge. It was an excellent way to stretch out tired abs after hard core training, and the strength it built in the spinal muscles was of incredible importance in protecting myself from some of the most debilitating injuries. Especially when I pulled myself out of the bridge and back to standing with nothing but core strength.

From there my conditioning was largely based around strengthening my handstand. I'd finally reached the point I could perform a pike press handstand without the slightest bend in my elbows, and my handstand pushups were strong enough I'd started practicing them on tree stumps to increase the distance.

My upper body strength really was coming along in leaps and bounds. It was turning out to be quite useful in resisting any armbars I got placed in, but the lack of serious hip drive was still holding back my grappling.

Naruto came along to interrupt my workout just as I was finishing off some pullups that I'd been performing on a towel I'd slung over a tree branch.

"Naruto, it's the weekend." I whined. "Can't I have a day off?"

He just gave me a foxy grin. "I got bored. Wanna play catch?"

I did, actually. Tossing a kunai back and forth was fairly relaxing. Like a sort of moving meditation. Neither of us were actually good enough to catch one if we threw it full force, so the whole thing ended up being a sort of slow motion battle.

I say battle, but we did get a little silly most days. Trying to throw behind the back, or under a leg, or while in the middle of an aerial, or something equally silly. It was half legitimate throwing/dodging practice and half fucking about showing off. Some of our shots were laughably off target, especially when we were keeping multiple kunai in the air at once.

Really, we were lucky some innocent bystander didn't get hit before.

There was no premonition when I let my kunai go. When it's trajectory curved up, up, and out of the training field, I didn't get a sudden ominous feeling like I knew something bad was going to happen. I'd already half forgotten it to catch the second one Naruto had thrown at me when I heard the scream.

I didn't just drop the kunai in my hand, I threw it down hard enough to bury it to the hilt in the dirt. Then, I was pumping chakra to my legs and sprinting towards where the scream came from. Naruto was a half second behind me.

Arriving at the next training field over, we found a young boy with unkempt black hair and a blue Uchiha shirt, cradling his shoulder where the kunai was lodged. It looked like it had come straight down onto him, sticking between the collarbone and his neck. It wasn't spraying arterial blood everywhere, so I hoped it wasn't a fatal wound, but with the knife still lodged in there like that it was hard to know for sure the extent of the damage.

Despite the blood starting to soak through his shirt, the kid seemed oddly calm about this. He was just glaring at us.

Naruto was freaking out way worse. He did a sort of awkward hop from one leg to the other and waved his hands about as he said, "Shit guy, are you okay?"

" _Fine_." the Uchiha growled out, holding his shoulder.

"Don't be stupid," I said, "we need to get you to the hospital." I'd already torn my oversized T-shirt off and begun cutting it into field bandages.

Naruto seemed confused. "We don't need to bother with all that, right? Let's just pull it out and he'll be good in no time." He reached for the kunai, but I slapped his hand away before he could touch it.

"Not everyone heals as fast as we do, baka." I spat out. I moved closer to start wrapping the injury, over the top of his blue shirt. The bandages didn't need to be perfect, they just had to hold the kunai in place while we ran. "Honestly, didn't you pay attention in first aid?" I asked.

"Eheheheh," he laughed nervously, "I think I was on bucket duty for most of that one." Typical.

The boy was looking a little woozy at this point, so I tried to pull him back into the conversation. "What's your name?" I asked him.

"Sasuke. Uchiha Sasuke." he replied.

 _Shit. I've stabbed a clan heir._ They were going to kill me when they found out.

"Right." I said, trying to sound a lot more confident than I felt after that bombshell. "Can you run?" He nodded, which was good enough for me.

"Okay try not to move the arm too much until we get there. Naruto knows the way to the hospital so we'll follow him okay?" He nodded again, so we took off at a jog.

As we ran I asked him, "What were you doing at the public training grounds anyway? Don't you Uchiha have private ones?"

His expression darkened, which was saying a lot considering he was dealing with his first real injury. "I don't like using those." was all he said in response.

I decided to stow any further chatter for the remainder of the journey. Upon arriving at the hospital, we rushed through to the emergency room. "We got a stab wound here!" I shouted, hoping someone would find that serious enough to deal with straight away.

I didn't have high hopes of being seen quickly after I caught sight of the people already waiting. There was a man with weeping burn wounds all across the side of his face, another one absolutely swathed in bandages and a third who was holding his own severed arm. If these guys had been kept waiting, I could only imagine how many more there must have been. What the hell had happened?

A medic popped his head out, probably just to assess us for triage. "How bad is... is that the Last Uchiha!?" his attention shifted from Sasuke to me before settling on Naruto. "What did you do you filthy monster?"

Naruto shrank under his intensity, but I was freaking out for my own reasons.

 _Last Uchiha_ , I thought. _That can't be right. I saw Uchiha MP's just last week._

That explains why he was avoiding the clan compound. Just his bad luck he had to run into us while he was running away from his demons.

We didn't stay to make sure Sasuke was okay. And I definitely didn't hang around to see if I could get my kunai back. We just beat it out of there, with the medic shouting obscenities at us the whole way out.

* * *

Sasuke started at the academy the very next day. It was unusual for anyone to start so close to the end of the year, so there was a lot of gossiping. The clan kids seemed to have a good idea of the situation, because they left him alone, but everyone else wanted to go bother him.

I half expected Naruto to make the situation worse by apologising to him in front of the whole class, but surprisingly he kept his distance. Either he got the impression that Sasuke wanted to be left alone for now, or he was actually learning to chose his moment better. Neither seemed likely, so I just assumed the idea of apologising didn't even occur to him at all. We both got injured fairly regularly when we trained, after all, so it probably didn't seem like a big deal to him.

All day Sasuke tried to avoid interacting with anyone, which seemed to just make him more mysterious and desirable to the romanticists among the girls. When no-one came to pick him up at the end of the day, the rumour mill spurred into overdrive. He wasn't just a poor orphan like me or Naruto, he was an _Uchiha_. And he was _all alone_.

The amount of girls trying to bother him the next day had doubled.

In an effort to help him out, I sat next to him in class and pulled out a book to read. _Fire Country and her Enemies_ was just more political propaganda, so that was out. _The Edible and the Poisonous_ was even more unimaginatively written than it was named (if such a thing could be believed). I settled on _Cryptonomicon_ , and absolutely enthralling treaty on the art of espionage, from the matrix algebra techniques used in code breaking to the study of micro-expressions.

He seemed to appreciate the silent support. Even if I was the one who had inadvertently stabbed him a few days earlier, at least I wasn't trying to bother him _now_.

It was the beginnings of a beautiful friendship. We never even spoke to each other. I found myself wishing Naruto could be a bit more like that.

* * *

Authors Notes: I think the writing actually falls pretty flat in this chapter, but eh. I'm sort of rushing through this arc to get to the fun stuff, and I think it shows.

Please review!


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